


The Dark Knight

by grapehyasynth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Batman AU, Canon-Typical Violence, Crack, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Tights, UST, capes, crime-fighting, fancy parties, penthouses, secret superhero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-02-27 19:13:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 27,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13254846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grapehyasynth/pseuds/grapehyasynth
Summary: Fitzsimmons Batman AU. Which one of them is Batman??? You'll have to read to find out!!! Will probably be light on plot/crime-fighting and heavy on angst, fluff, UST, and eventual RST and smut (hopefully).





	1. Prologue

“C’mon man, can’t you go any faster? I don’t like this part of town.”

The man kneeling by the ATM flipped his face guard up to look pityingly at his companion, who was standing guard a few feet away at the end of the alley. “Seriously, Jake? _We’re_ the criminals. We _run_ this town.”

“It’s not the criminals I’m afraid of, _Keith_. It’s – him.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake – he’s a myth made up by the media and the GCPD to scare petty thieves and low-level dealers. We’re above that. With the Clairvoyant on our side –“ He cut off as the side of the ATM slid away from the surrounding wall an inch. “Alright, alright, here we go! Come help me with this.”

Jake hurried to join him, both men grunting slightly as they started to shimmy the entire ATM out of the side of the building.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

They whirled around, guns already leveled at the figure leaning against the wall in the shadows behind them.

“Who are you?” demanded Keith.

“It’s _him_ ,” Jake hissed, hands visibly shaking.

“Bullshit,” Keith spat.

“Rude,” said the figure, pushing off to approach them. “I’ve been watching you two, and you know, you’re not a very supportive partner.” (This directed at Keith.) “Your mate here is much more sensible than you. If you’d only listened to him and vacated this area instead of pursuing this frankly preposterously high-effort, low-reward heist, you could be spending the night with your families instead of in an interrogation room with the _lovely_ Commissioner, who will be _so_ delighted to hear all about your little escapade and what you know about the inner workings of your slimy little syndicate.”

“You talk too much,” Keith snarled, cocking his pistol sideways.

“And you favor your left side.”

“Wha-” But the figure had already ducked forward, evading the frightened shot that Jake managed to get off, spinning under Keith’s outstretched arm and whacking him resoundingly just under his ribcage. He doubled over, earning him a kick in the arse, and by the time he’d hit the far wall and turned, Jake was on the ground, his wrists bound in thick black bands.

“You’ll never win!” Keith panted, grinning perversely even as blood trickled from a cut on his forehead. “You’re a guy in tights. We’ve got an army. A _revolution_. Tell _that_ to your precious Commissioner. Hail Hydr—”

“Oh, shut up,” sighed the figure, and they slapped him across the face.

Once Keith’s wrists were likewise bound, the figure dragged the two men to sit upright against the wall by the ATM and tied their ankles together, then attached a flashing beacon to the brick several feet above their heads.

“The GCPD will arrive in a few moments, so I recommend you use this time to get your story straight and decide what matters more to you, loyalty to a dying collective of narcissistic Neo-Nazis or your avoiding ten years minimum in a federal prison with criminals who can _actually_ fight.”

“It’s true, then?” Jake asked tremulously, gazing up at the figure shrouded in fog and shadow. “You’re – you’re the Dark Knight?”

The figure looked away. “I must be out there in the night, staying vigilant. Wherever a party needs to be saved, I’m there. Wherever there are masks, wherever there’s tomfoolery and joy, I’m there. But sometimes I’m not, because I’m out in the night, staying vigilant. Watching. Lurking. Running. Jumping. Hurtling. Sleeping. No, I can’t sleep. They sleep. I’m awake. I don’t sleep. I don’t blink. Am I bird? No, I’m a bat.”

 Into the silence that followed, the first echoes of approaching squad cars started to echo through the otherwise still neighborhood.

The vigilante sighed.

“Seriously? _Community?_ One of the best TV comedies of the last decade?”

Both men shook their heads.

“Of course not. Your lot probably watch _Entourage_ or _Duck Dynasty_ or similar.”

They squatted in front of the men, a smirk curving the mouth just visible below the black mask.

“But yes. I _am_ Batman.”

And then they were off and running, vanishing into the night just as the police pulled up, the edge of the billowing black cape disappearing around the far corner.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cn: some genre-typical violence

_“The masked man strikes again – for good. Police Commissioner Coulson confirmed this morning that Batman, Gotham’s favorite mysterious vigilante, was involved in the capture last night of two known members of the Hydra crime syndicate. This marks the sixth time in just three weeks that Batman has helped the GCPD with its wrangling of the minions of the night. Despite the steady flow of rumors on Twitter, including that billionaire industrialist Ian Quinn might be the man behind the cape, there’s still no word on the identity of our shadowy hero. Citizens across Gotham’s neighborhoods report sleeping more soundly at night, and some raise the question – isn’t it past time Commissioner Coulson inducts Batman into the police force? Personally I think they could learn a thing or two from him, Nancy,”_ chuckled the news reporter as she shuffled her papers to signal the conclusion of the segment.

“Not this tripe again,” Fitz muttered, scowling at the TV as he laced up his sneakers.

“Cutting edge journalism, Leopold,” Daisy corrected from the couch, where she was somehow watching the TV, using her phone, and browsing through a few dozen tabs on the laptop on her stomach.

“He’s not a ‘shadowy hero’, he’s a tosser. One of these days he’ll get in our way and get one of our officers – or a civilian – seriously hurt.”  

“You’re just jealous because Batman makes you guys look bad.”

“Well, sure, if you’re not restricted by an ever-dwindling municipal budget, legal limitations, and the moral implications of police brutality, it’s easy to swoop around everywhere picking up the easy cases and then not dealing with any of the fall-out. No one’s going after Batman’s family if he crosses Hydra, but if one of us does it—” He drew a finger across his throat.

Daisy nodded sagely. “Sleeping with the fishes.”

“Cops don’t really say that anymore, but yeah.”

“But from what I hear, you won’t be a beat cop much longer!”

Fitz dropped the gym bag he’d just picked up back onto the floor by the door and groaned, covering his face with his hands. “Bloody hell, I told Jemma not to tell anyone—”

“Seriously, Fitz?” Daisy gave him a pitying look, setting her devices aside for the first time. “Jemma can’t keep a secret to save her life. And why should she? She’s proud of you, she was practically dancing when she told me. Making sergeant would be huge!”

“It’s just a slight increase in pay and responsibility,” Fitz mumbled, the tips of his ears flushed bright pink. “And I didn’t want anyone to know because I haven’t gotten the results back yet, I might not even—”

“Okay, Mr. ‘Medal of Valor eight times in three years’,” she snorted. “What was your college GPA?”

“Shut up,” Fitz sighed, snatching a hat off the coat rack and chucking it in her direction.

“Love you too!” she called after him as he left the apartment. “Tell Jemma I said hi!”

 

 

“C’mon Fitz, don’t they make you do mandatory cardio at work?” Jemma panted, grinning devilishly at Fitz.

“Yes,” he ground out, struggling to keep up with her as she literally ran backwards in a zig-zag across the path in front of him, “but it’s in an air-conditioned gym with HD television and no caffeine-addled maniacs taunting me—”

“No caffeine, baby, pure runner’s high.” Jemma finally turned around and dropped back to match his pace, her t-shirt infuriatingly sweat-free. “You just have to give in to the sweet release of exercise.”

“If it’s followed shortly by the sweet release of death, I’ll take it,” Fitz moaned, and he halted completely, bending over with his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. “I can’t bicker with you _and_ sprint, ‘specially this early on a Saturday.”

Jemma glanced pointedly at a couple of speed-walking octogenarians who’d just passed them, but she didn’t comment and just rubbed a hand reassuringly over his shoulders. “Of course, sorry for pushing too hard. I know you’d rather be just about anywhere else right now.”

Feeling slightly less like he’d been hit in the chest (and legs, and feet) by a 747, Fitz straightened, planting his hands on his hips as he watched Jemma check their progress on her high-tech watch. A few wisps of hair curled out from her ponytail, just slightly darker with sweat, and the slight sheen on her forehead glistened in the sun still rising over the city. “The things I do for you,” he said teasingly.

Jemma tilted her head a fraction, giving him that smile she never seemed to realize would get him to say yes to anything, even ungodly exercise. “Let’s stretch and then I’ll buy us both bubble tea, my treat,” she assured him.

Fitz slapped his own chest with one palm, gaping at her in mock astonishment even as she bent to touch her toes. “A whole $3.25? Jemma Simmons, I am _gobsmacked_. You’d spend that much on little old me?”

Jemma managed to roll her eyes and toss her ponytail simultaneously. “I _offered_ to buy you a new apartment—”

“I’m joking, I’m joking,” Fitz chuckled, joining her on the patch of grass. He’d just wanted to see that little amused annoyance that made her nose go all scrunchy.

After their cool-down, they strolled arm-in-arm along the river, drinking their bubble tea. (Fitz, naturally, fished out the bubbles first, using his straw to shoot a few of them at Jemma at close-range.) Every few minutes, other pedestrians would do a double-take as they saw Jemma, whispering amongst themselves as they passed.

The third time this happened, Fitz let the giant plastic straw fall from between his teeth and asked, “Aren’t you ever worried about people seeing you like this? Ending up on Instagram?”

Jemma partially extracted herself from their linked arms, looking at him wide-eyed. “Are you telling me I don’t look devastatingly _beautiful_ at _all times_?”

“You know what I mean,” he laughed, elbowing her side.

She shrugged, frowning down at her drink. “It doesn’t really matter.”

This time he outright snorted. “Daisy’s right, you’re a _dreadful_ liar.”

She scoffed, then assented, “Maybe I get a _bit_ insecure about people seeing me so – au naturale, if you will, but maybe it’s healthy for people to see that I’m not constantly attending charity functions in designer ballgowns, or whatever they think I do all the time. To quote our Queen and Savior Beyoncé, I woke up like this, and people will have to accept that.”

Fitz nodded sagely. “The people’s billionaire, you are.”

“With you to keep me humble, of course,” she murmured, and squeezed his bicep with her free hand, resting her chin on his shoulder for a second before returning to her boba.

Fitz knew better by now, after half his lifetime spent as Jemma’s best friend, than to read anything into Jemma’s physical affection. It still sent a warm rush suffusing his entire body, it still made him want to puff out his chest, but that’s all he’d allow. She’d never rebuffed him, exactly, but the few times he’d sort of, roundabout, hesitantly tried to broach the subject of his persistent and distracting crush on her, it just hadn’t… happened. And having been through so much together, especially Jemma’s continued stalwart friendship even as she founded her own biotech company and became one of Gotham’s most respected leaders and philanthropists, he was grateful she even remembered little old Fitz. (He’d said something along these lines once and gotten a resounding talking-to from Jemma, who was absolutely furious he viewed himself as anything but “brilliant, and amazing, and compassionate, and the bravest man I know, and just a million times better than anyone, okay??”)

“I was thinking,” Jemma announced ponderously, gently steering Fitz to the side of the path so she could properly recycle her empty cup, “about throwing a charity gala for my birthday.”

“The big 3-0,” Fitz said in a radio announcer voice.

“Exactly. And I’d love it if you’d—”

“Talk to Coulson about providing security for the event? ‘Course, Jemma, I’ll ask him later—”

“No, that’s not—” Jemma shook her head, looking slightly confused. “I mean, yes, that’s actually quite practical, but – only if you’re not on duty that night. Because I’d like it if you’d accompany me, as my plus-one.”

She asked him this every year, invited him as her date to at least one high-society party – more out of tradition, he suspected, than because he made an appropriate escort; Jemma’s acquaintances were much more posh than the circles in which he, occasionally, socialized. Technically he was _invited_ to every party she threw, but he could only stomach attending the ones where he went as her date, because she’d actually stick with him most of the night, making decidedly vulgar comments under her breath and causing him to choke on the popcorn shrimp.

“Yeah,” he answered simply, trying to convey his genuine appreciation in his gaze. “Yeah, I’d like that too.”

“Brilliant,” Jemma beamed.

 

 

The thought of another slightly tipsy, giggly, well-dressed evening (for charity, he reminded himself slightly guiltily) with Jemma in less than a month had Fitz floating on air as he went home, showered, and headed to work. Once at the precinct office, though, he carefully shut out anything other than the paperwork on his desk. (It was a zen-like concentration Jemma had tried to get him to apply to jogging, but he’d proven willfully stubborn about failing.) There wasn’t actually much to do lately – totally unrelated to Batman’s efficacy, _of course_ – and Fitz was actually grateful when Commissioner Coulson came striding over to his desk shortly after sundown.

“Sir!” Fitz said quickly, standing and in the process bumping his knee against the desk and sending his rolling chair backwards across the floor.

“At ease, Officer Fitz, this isn’t the military,” Coulson said with his characteristic half-smile. “And calling me sir won’t get you your results any more quickly.”

“Yes sir, commissioner, sir, I understand. Does that, um, does that mean you _haven’t_ received the exam results—?”

“I will inform you the minute I know, Fitz, I promise,” Coulson assured him with a fatherly pat on his shoulder. “Actually, I have an animal abuse call I’d like you and Davis to go check out. Officers Piper and Mack are near the location but they’ve just apprehended a suspect in an armed robbery.”

Fitz grabbed the notes Coulson handed him and his jacket from the hook by his desk. “On it, sir – Commissioner Coulson – Coulson.”

 

Fitz knew, the instant he and Davis pulled into the abandoned lot, that something was wrong.

At first it was just a prickle between his shoulder-blades, an indescribable intuition. Then, as they were walking across the cracked pavement towards the apartment complex about which the animal abuse claim had been lodged, several details clicked together, his conscious mind catching on to what had so unnerved his subconscious. The street lights just outside the lot were all out, just one bulb suspended off the side of the building nearest their patrol car illuminating the area. The building, too, was totally dark, though Coulson said the call had been placed by an apartment dweller just twenty minutes ago. And there, on the third floor, several windows were open, and –

“Davis! It’s an ambush!” Fitz shouted, scrabbling for his gun and flashlight and running to pull the other man behind the safety of the car.

The force of the first shotgun volley struck Davis full in the chest, knocking him backwards into Fitz, who fell across the front of the car and rolled off, his gun and flashlight flying across the pavement. As more shots resounded from the apartments, Fitz scrambled on all fours until he was crouched between the side of the car and the brick wall of the next building. He counted to three to stop the shaking in his hands, then – still keeping his head below the bottom lip of the window – pried the driver’s side door open, pressed himself flat along the seat, and grabbed blindly for the dispatch radio.

“Coulson!” he hollered, covering his head with his other arm as the car rocked, one of its tires apparently struck and leaking air. “Coulson, it was a trap, we need help-”

The passenger window shattered and the radio exploded, mere inches from Fitz’s hand. He fell backwards out of the car and twisted around to sit with his back against the car.

From here he could just see the top of Davis’s head and, about a meter beyond the nose of the car, Fitz’s gun and flashlight. He could wait for reinforcements, hope that Coulson had gotten his message, though maybe they, too, would be picked off by the unseen assailants, and in the meantime the shooters could descend and come to find him -- Fitz dropped his head back against the car, closing his eyes in preparation. There was nothing for it.

Pressing up into a squat, he squeezed his way to the very edge of the cover provided by the car. He could dive over to his weapon in a second, roll up and either try to take out the shooters or take cover again. Assuming he wasn’t shot, it wouldn’t take more than three seconds.

 _Assuming he wasn’t shot_.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered, readying himself for the spring.

Just as he raised up onto the balls of his feet, something black streaked down from the sky and landed on the front of the patrol car. “Don’t move!” Batman yelled in a strangely garbled voice, deflecting a hail of bullets with alarming ease using some kind of armor along his forearms.

But Fitz was already in motion, and in his confusion he stumbled forward, his momentum lost. He saw the flash from the building above, heard the crack and Batman’s shout of _“No!”_ , felt frozen as Batman flung himself in front of Fitz, directly into the line of fire.

In the next second Fitz came back to himself, grabbed his gun from the ground and then dragged Batman by the feet back behind the car. He crouched again, one hand on the ground, ready to stage a Butch Cassidy last-ditch effort, but a gloved hand on his ankle stopped him.

“Fitz,” Batman wheezed.

Bile rose in his throat, because he’d recognize the lilt of that voice anywhere. He peeled off the mask carefully, processed the voice alteration hardware installed just at the inner edge of it, and there – cape spread across the ground, eyes slightly unfocused, bleeding out from just above her armpit where the breastplate had ridden up – was Jemma.

 


	3. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cn: some swearing, because feelings

Jemma faded in and out of consciousness, day and night and pain and relief blending. She felt like she was choking and tried to claw the clasps of her cape open, but unseen hands held her back. She dreamt feverishly that she was back in training for hand-to-hand combat, but her teacher was a many-headed sea creature. She thought, a few times, in the groggy moments when she opened her eyelids but couldn’t be sure she was actually awake, that she saw Fitz slumped in a chair by her bedside.

When she woke up properly for the first time, her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton and her eyes burned a little as they readjusted to the lights. That, really, was how she could tell it wasn’t a dream, that and recognizing the room her hospital bed was in as her own living room.

She tried to sit up and a monitor next to her bed started beeping erratically. Fitz – really there, sleeping beside her in his crumpled uniform – jerked awake, elbow slipping off the arm of the chair and chin nearly hitting his chest.

“Hey,” Jemma murmured, giving him a weak smile, but he just scrambled up and away and out of the room. He returned a moment later with Bobbi and hovered behind her as she checked Jemma’s vitals.

“Jemma,” Fitz said – a little slowly and a little too loudly, as if he thought the bullet in her chest might’ve impacted her cognition, “this is Bobbi. She’s here to help.”

“I know, Fitz,” Jemma replied in the same condescending tone, ignoring the way Bobbi smirked. “Bobbi and I have been working together for six years.”

“Right. Well.” Fitz’s hands were back on his hips, his jaw set in a fashion Jemma knew all too well. “I’ve just met her, so I’m still processing. Processing a lot, actually. Like, um—” He scratched at his curls, and Jemma braced herself for the look he gave her, the look she’d seen dozens of times before but of which she’d never, _never_ , been the cause before, equal parts wounded and disbelieving, “Like how you’re… Batman?”

Bobbi’s cool fingers tightened protectively on Jemma’s uninjured shoulder. “Maybe this conversation should wait until Jemma’s recovered a bit.”

There was nothing more that Jemma wanted in that moment than to take the out Bobbi offered, to claim weakness and beg off. But Fitz deserved better.

“It’s okay,” she said softly to Bobbi, meeting her gaze reassuringly. “It’s overdue anyway.”

Bobbi hesitated a moment longer, giving Fitz a glare that would’ve caused a less-distracted man to wilt, but nodded. “Just hit this button if you need me, Jem.”

In the tense silence that followed Bobbi’s departure, Jemma berated herself for not preparing for this. She’d had years to think about how best to explain herself and answer all the inevitable questions. Fitz must be confused and overwhelmed, and she didn’t even know where to start in helping him understand.

“Is Davis--?” she asked tentatively, deciding they could start by piecing together her own shattered memories of the night she’d been shot.

Fitz shook his head jerkily. “Dead when he hit the ground.”

“Fitz, I’m so, _so_ sorry. I can’t imagine – you were partners for years—”

“Three years, yeah.” Fitz sunk unsteadily back into the chair, hands bundled together in his lap. “He had a baby—”

Jemma bowed her head. She’d seen Fitz lose friends and colleagues before – his grief, in fact, had been part of the reason she’d accepted, all those years ago, when Bruce Wayne had asked her to take over his secret identity. She didn’t need the personal evidence of Hydra’s deadly dominance to motivate her to want to help the city, but it certainly made things more clear.

“But you’re okay?”

Fitz shrugged. Jemma understood.

Taking as deep a breath as the tight pain in her shoulder would allow, Jemma began firmly, “Fitz, I know you’ve never approved of Batman, but I hope now that you see it’s me—”

“You think that makes it better?” For the first time, Fitz’s voice rattled with anger. “Yeah, I thought he was an idiot. I thought he was some bored karate instructor or egotistical cosplayer who doesn’t understand how complicated and _fucked up_ this shit is and thought he could fix everything. And then it’s you?” He looked up at her, brow scrunched, and a sharp pain to match the actual wound dug its way into Jemma’s lungs. “You should know better, Jemma. You’ve got no training, no support team, no legal protection if something goes wrong—”

Jemma tried gently to interrupt him but he plowed on.

“You can’t do this,” Fitz announced flatly, sitting back in his chair. Jemma spluttered in indignation. “It’s selfish, it’s crazy – how do you expect me to focus at work, now, knowing you’re out there getting yourself shot at?”

“And how,” Jemma asked coolly, before he could crash onwards, “do you think I knew where you’d be, that night of the shooting?”

Fitz shook his head, looking stymied by the sudden left turn the conversation had taken.

“For six years,” Jemma said, trying to keep her voice level and _not_ cry, “my team has followed all the GCPD’s frequencies. I _personally_ track yours. Every time you go out on patrol, I hear it. I imagine it. I imagine the _worst_. When you sent that distress call, saying it was a trap, and then your radio got blown up – I _heard_ that, Fitz, I thought – I thought—” Jemma shook her head rapidly and pressed on, “That terrified concern you’re feeling now – I’ve been feeling that every day since you joined the force.”

“That’s _not_ the same thing,” Fitz said firmly. “You can’t just – you can’t try to take care of me—”

“So you’re allowed to go out every night nearly dying to help this city and I’m supposed to sit at home twiddling my thumbs, or – or – _knitting_?” Jemma snapped.

“We’re _cops_ , Jemma, actual _police officers_ , it’s our job, we’ve got protocols and back-up and bullet-proof vests—”

“Like the one you weren’t wearing the night I had to jump in front of you to keep you from being _killed_?” Jemma cried out, totally flabbergasted at his stubborn, idiotic irrationality.

“It was a routine animal abuse call, Kevlar wasn’t necessary—”

“Nothing is _routine_ about Gotham City, Fitz, it hasn’t been for years,” she pleaded with him. “Hydra doesn’t care about your protocol. They’ve got more resources than you, they’re always three steps ahead, and you need someone who can operate in the shadows, because that’s where Hydra works!”

“You weren’t working in the shadows when you interfered with police business! I always said Batman would get in the way, and now look what you’ve done—”

“What _I’ve_ done?” Jemma demanded, her voice a half-octave higher in indignation.

“Yes, _you_ , Jemma,” Fitz erupted, rocketing out of his chair, and though Jemma knew he’d never hurt her, she couldn’t help but recoil. She knew, from years of comforting him when his abusive dad returned to town, from the fallout of a mob plant inside the force whom Fitz had trusted and loved like a brother, that Fitz was never angrier than when he felt betrayed and afraid. “Do you know what I dreamt about, these last few days, as I sat at your bedside wondering if you’d ever wake up? I had fucking _nightmares_ of you jumping off bloody buildings!”

Silence followed this outburst, Fitz’s quickened breathing the only sound in the large room.

After a beat, he whispered imploringly, “Jemma. You have to stop. You can’t be Batman.”

Jemma had anticipated he’d say this, but it still felt like a cold fist clenched around her heart.

“No,” she replied.

Fitz’s hands dropped to his side, his face suddenly drained and destitute.

“Then there’s nothing for it,” he said shakily, and Jemma wished he’d shout again, he sounded so miserable. “I’ll tell Coulson who you are, who Batman is. I’m sure we can drag up charges for something you’ve done, get an arrest warrant.”

“Ugh, _Fitz_ —”

“It’s for your own good, Jemma!”

“Fine! Maybe you _should_ ,” she retorted, fully giving in to the frustrating futility of this entire conversation.

“Maybe I will!” Fitz squawked back, and he stormed out, Jemma hurling the plastic cup from her sidetable at him as he went. It hit the door a second after he slammed it shut.

Jemma felt paralyzed for a moment, then she burst into tears, covering her face and shaking with sobs of devastation at his reaction but also, improbably, with sweet relief that he finally knew.

 

 

Bobbi, whom Jemma had no doubt had been listening in from the next room, waited a respectful few minutes before she came back in, giving Jemma time to blot her face dry with the corner of her sheet.

“Stupid drugs making me all emotional,” she chuckled weakly as Bobbi checked her IV.

“He’ll be back,” Bobbi murmured, smiling gently.

“I don’t know that he will, Bobbi,” Jemma sighed. “I’ve never seen him that afraid. Well, that’s not entirely true, of course I’ve known Fitz to be afraid, but he’s not afraid of _being_ afraid, he does things anyway, he’s stupidly brave like that. But this time… I don’t know. It was different.”

“Yeah, because it’s _you_ , ya dummy,” Bobbi snorted affectionately, smoothing back Jemma’s hair. “I met the guy less than 72 hours ago and I can already see he’d gladly return the favor, take a bullet for you as well.”

Jemma floundered, unsure what to do with that information. “He’s my best friend,” she said finally.

“I know, babe. I know.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i fully intend to keep updating every day, at the very least for the next three chapters, so don't be too devastated!!


	4. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, unbetaed and written mostly off the seat of my pants. Also, I realized yesterday I said it was in Gotham but also had been writing NYPD so that should be fixed everywhere now lol

The morning following Jemma’s fight with Fitz and his thundering departure, the door burst open and Fitz himself came barreling through, still in the same clothes from yesterday (from the last four days, at this point) and the haggard evidence of a sleepless night all over his face.

Jemma, fully expecting Commissioner Coulson and a squad of GCPD officers to be on Fitz’s heels, quickly set aside the scientific journal she’d be perusing and opened her mouth, ready to put on her best “Batman? _Me_?” act, but Fitz careened to a halt a few feet from her bed and started rambling, nose nearly pressed to a tablet he was clutching with both hands.

“I’m gonna need to know how you fund your projects, your secret projects, because I’ll need, um, 10,000 at least to improve your chest plate, and I don’t know if we can include it on your company’s inventories but I assume you’ve thought of that and decided that’s too risky and have some alternate route when you make your gadgets and whatnot.”

Feeling thoroughly whiplashed, Jemma could only gape. “Fitz – _what_ —”

 “– I obviously can’t run it through GCPD requisitions, even if you were to fund it by making a donation or something. It shouldn’t take more than a couple weeks, not that you should be up and about before then anyway—”

“Fitz!” she interrupted again, this time with enough fervor to make Fitz shut his mouth with an audible snap. “I may be a certifiable genius but I am very much _not_ following, what on _earth_ are you going on about?”

Fitz took a deep, shaky breath and let the tablet fall to his side. His voice trembled slightly as he said, “It took me about thirty seconds after I left yesterday to realize what an arse I’d been—”

A gentler soul might’ve felt a need to assure Fitz he hadn’t been an arse, but Jemma very much did not. Still, she nearly reached for him, but let her hand fall back to her lap. “What took you so long, then?”

“I was – I was designing this.”

He handed her the tablet, and though Jemma understood it all in a matter of seconds, she still didn’t _understand._

“Fitz?” she repeated, this time a question.

“I estimated the measurements,” he admitted with a hint of a blush and an almost imperceptible, seemingly involuntary flick of his eyes down to her chest.  Jemma felt her own cheeks heat but for an entirely different reason. “Your old chest plate was clearly a hand-me-down, originally designed for a man, this part of your chest,” he circled the side near the armpit and shoulder, where she’d been shot, “should never have been exposed, wouldn’t’ve been if you’d had something properly fitted. So I started looking at some designs the GCPD and SWAT have been testing for female officers, and—”

In different circumstances, Jemma might’ve laughed at how he was rambling on and on saying nothing to actually resolve her confusion. It was so quintessentially _Fitz_ , somehow. “Fitz, I still don’t – I’m not sure – yesterday, you said—”

“I know I can’t stop you, as much as I might want to,” Fitz said all in a rush, and when Jemma looked up from the tablet [his eyes were wide and earnest, almost tearful, and he was smiling sadly, tremulously. But he was meeting her gaze, at last](https://i1.wp.com/ap2hyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/fitz.png?resize=600%2C350). “But,” he continued, resolutely, “if I help you, maybe I can help keep you safe.”

Jemma didn’t realize she was crying until a teardrop splotched across the tablet’s surface. “Oh, bullocks,” she muttered, trying to wipe it off with her sleeve. “I don’t need your help,” she directed at Fitz, half-scolding, half-laughing.

“I know,” Fitz murmured.

“I have a very effective team, we’ve made it work for years—”

“I know.”

“Not to say your design isn’t fantastic, and incredibly considerate, and would probably have been very convenient on the night in question, and you definitely bring a lot of valuable expertise from which we could benefit—”

Fitz gently took the tablet back from her and caught the hand with which she’d been trying to scrub her cheeks dry.

“I’m sorry I shouted,” he whispered.

Jemma wanted to say as many things as Fitz’s expression was conveying in that moment, nearly overwhelming in its intensity.

“I’m glad you came back,” she answered finally, sliding her palm down so their fingers twined.

“Now, I’ve got some questions,” Fitz admitted, snugging the tablet under his arm so he could pull a folded paper out of his pocket without releasing her.

Jemma shook her head, bringing her free hand up to the crease on her brow. “Bobbi wasn’t entirely wrong yesterday, I’m knackered and on about a half-dozen drugs and there are only so many revelations and confrontations and resolutions I can handle for one day. I promise I’ll answer everything, just – another time?”

“Course.” He squeezed her hand, looking almost unrecognizable in comparison to the man who’d blustered in moments before – still tired, but relaxed, nearly radiant. “Sorry for, y’know, making everything worse—“

He’d started towards the door, but Jemma tightened her grip on his hand and tugged him towards her until his knees hit the bedframe. “You could stay… just a little longer?”

Fitz watched her, disbelieving, as she shuffled to the far side of the bed, making enough space for him, but he didn’t comment or resist. The bed dipped slightly towards him as he climbed onto it, and Jemma took that as an excuse to tilt towards him, to let their sides rest against each other, the backs of their hands brushing, as she closed her eyes. (She really _was_ knackered.)

“I really _am_ glad you know, now, Fitz,” she whispered, “I’ve thought so many times about telling you—”

“’s okay,” Fitz murmured back, his voice barely a rumble. “I understand why you didn’t. Would’ve done the same, if I were you, probably. Well, to be more accurate, I would’ve died about three years ago, if I were you, but—”

Jemma snorted, and she could feel Fitz’s gratified grin against her temple.

“Still,” she went on sleepily, sinking back into the cushions and just a tad bit more into Fitz’s warmth, “there was so much I couldn’t – didn’t say…”

Fitz was silent, expectant, but Jemma had just enough sense to stop herself there. She _was_ still drugged up, though not _really_ to a degree that it should impair her judgement or lead to loose lips. But she could feel Fitz’s heart still pounding a little too quickly from their emotional conversation, and she knew they still had considerable ground to cover in terms of finding the new equilibrium of their friendship. It was too soon to consider whether Fitz knowing her secret identity would finally allow them to be _more_.

But still, in the fuzzy comfort of near-sleep, she couldn’t be blamed for entertaining the idea, just a little.

 

 

Between Fitz’s work schedule, Jemma’s slow return to her job at her own company (against complaints from both Fitz and Bobbi, at which Jemma grumbled, “I _knew_ you two would get along, I _knew it_ ”), and Bobbi’s stern admonitions about not straining herself, Jemma and Fitz weren’t able to get around to Fitz’s questions for a week and a half. Finally, on a Friday afternoon, Fitz went straight from the precinct to Jemma’s company’s tower. Jemma herself met him at the front entrance and led him to the elevator, where she ignored the few dozen buttons and instead opened a hidden panel and inserted a key she wore around her neck. The elevator, as Fitz had suspected, went whooshing _down_ underneath the city.

The room they entered was cavernous – the ceilings weren’t very high, but the room was wide and stretched at least a couple football fields. The walls were fitted with panels of some metallic material, their edges glowing with hidden LED strips.

“I work with localized lighting when I need to do more refined work, don’t want to—”

“Draw attention from the electric company, yeah,” Fitz nodded. “This was an underground station once, wasn’t it?”

Though not at all surprised by his perceptivity, Jemma nonetheless felt a little flutter of pride. “On a line they never finished, yes. Bruce – Mr. Wayne – the previous Batman, he worked from underneath his own mansion, but as I’m not a member of the Wayne family, it would’ve been a bit noticeable if I’d suddenly started spending time there. And we wanted to be underground, but with all the existing underground infrastructure, as well as sewage systems and the like, we needed—”

“Something that was marked on planning maps as abandoned, so it’d not be interfered with or overlap with other structures,” Fitz finished for her, again nodding appreciatively. After a beat he realized Jemma was looking at him with an amused lift to her eyebrows. “Sorry, your tour.”

Fitz, it turned out, didn’t just have _some_ questions – he had questions about _everything_.

“How’s the flying work? I imagined it’d be something like Falcon, you know—” He stuck his arms out to either side.

“Sort of,” Jemma wheedled, “but mostly not at all. “A series of elegantly hidden mini-jets, an extensive understanding of the laws of physics, and an _extremely_ expensive cape.

“Have you met other superheroes?”

It was the first time he’d called her a ‘superhero’, and Jemma schooled her face to not show her pleasure. “The Arrow, a few times, though only for business. Bruce Banner at a few conferences. Honestly, Supergirl is the most fun to hang out with outside of work.”

“Right,” Fitz murmured, looking for all the world as if he were processing some deep revelation of a philosophical conundrum. “How often do you go out as Batman?”

“When I’m physically fit,” Jemma said, pointing to the bandage just peeking out from her shirt collar, “five times a week, perhaps.”

“Five ti—bloody hell, Jemma, when do you sleep?”

“You sound like Bobbi,” Jemma sighed. “We studied together at uni, Fitz, you know I can get two hours’ rest and still ace a test.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea!”

He found out about the extensive training she’d received, first from Bruce Wayne and then from a variety of his trusted colleagues and allies, who’d guided her in martial arts, general fitness, classical espionage tactics, foreign languages, hacking, and assorted other skills. (Fitz apologized profusely, again, for suggesting she was an untrained civilian jumping rashly in without forethought.) He asked, nervously, whether she’d ever killed someone, and she answered truthfully that she didn’t know, but that she avoided lethal force at all costs. He asked if the last Batman had died, and when she informed him that Bruce Wayne had merely decided to retire, he asked casually whether that would someday be an option for her as well. Theoretically, she told him, and they left it there.

Watching him ponder everything she told him and carefully pronounce new questions and hover over the tech she had on display, Jemma tried to remember what it had been like before he’d known. She’d always expected their dynamic would change, were Fitz to discover the secret, but this, showing him, inviting him into her world, felt exactly as fluid and easy as her friendship with Fitz always had. She’d wondered if he’d look at her with new fear or respect, but he’d always respected her an inordinate, almost embarrassing amount anyway, and he didn’t seem afraid so much as cautiously in awe. Every now and then she noticed him catch himself on the edge of saying something, mostly when she casually mentioned one of the more dangerous components of her work, so she knew there was still a lot he wasn’t saying. A lot of worry he was keeping inside. But he was listening, and learning, and trying to understand, and that was a start.

“And why Bat _man_? Why not make some cloaked announcement to the media that it’s Bat _woman_ now?”

Jemma shrugged. “If the Doctor can be a woman, why not Batman?”

“Is the Doctor real too?” Fitz asked hopefully.

“Erm…” Jemma said awkwardly.

“Right, yeah, no, of course not,” he muttered. “Got carried away.”  

He looked deeply put out, so Jemma tugged on his sleeve. “C’mon, I’ve got something that might cheer you up.”  

In an adjacent room, Jemma flicked on the overhead lights, watching Fitz’s mouth drop open.

“Is that—?”

“It is.”

“I—” He covered his mouth, then planted his hands on his hands, obviously at a loss. “I mean, I saw it when it rolled up out of nowhere and saved us that night, but I was a little bewildered by everything and didn’t really take it in—”

“It’s okay, Fitz, you can admit it’s cool,” Jemma smirked.

He floated past her, dazed, and hovered just next to the Batmobile, apparently unsure whether he could touch it. “It’s – Christ, Jemma,” he groaned, spinning to face her, grinning with childlike glee. “It’s really _fucking cool_!”

“There’s also a motorcycle,” she rushed to tell him, bouncing on her heels.

“No!” Fitz gasped.

“ _And_ a helicopter.”

“Oh my god.” Fitz dragged his hands down his face in blissful agony. “I have a lot of reservations about this whole arrangement but I cannot deny that all this – your aesthetic, your tech, your _ride_ – is bloody amazing.”

“Thank you,” Jemma trilled.

“Daisy would love all this,” Fitz added as an afterthought, poking at a control panel next to the Batmobile before Jemma slapped his hands away.

“I thought about bringing her in on it, once, when I first got the offer. But Mr. Wayne had someone else in mind. Do you want to meet her?”

The surveillance chamber was another offshoot from the main cavern. Fitz turned in a slow circle, taking in the shifting screens, the low buzz of radio frequencies, several computers tallying data in the corner.

“Bloody hell,” he whispered, for probably the sixth time on their tour.

“Fitz, this is Melinda May.”

Fitz tripped over his own shoes as the figure standing in front of the main wall of screens turned to face them.

“Shut up!” he breathed.

“Excuse me?” Jemma and May asked at the same time.

“I know you! I mean, not really, but your picture is in the GCPD headquarters, you’re a legend, they call you the—”

“You can call her May,” Jemma said hurriedly, catching the way May’s eyes narrowed. “And we’ll leave her alone now, I think.”

She shot May an apologetic look and guided a still-gawping Fitz back out into the main room.

“She was covert ops,” Fitz whispered to Jemma, glancing back at the entrance to the surveillance room. “One of the best they’d ever seen. Still not sure why she came to work for the GCPD—”

“Ah. That part of her legend I _do_ know,” Jemma said with a bitter smile. “She was in love. Married. To Andrew Garner.”

“Former DA Garner, _that_ Andrew Garner?”

“The same. They moved to Gotham together when she finished her career in espionage, he became DA, and then--”

“I remember,” Fitz said grimly. The assassination of beloved District Attorney Garner had marked the beginning of Hydra’s reign in Gotham. Jemma and Fitz had just been children, but it was an event most residents of Gotham considered infamously unforgettable. “Sometimes people doing good in the world are the ones who get punished.”

“Them, and the people who love them,” Jemma murmured, eyes back on the hallway to May’s surveillance room.

She caught Fitz watching her, an inscrutable furrow in his brow, and cleared her throat.

“I think that’s enough for now. Back up?”

The elevator ride back up to the surface was significantly more subdued. After the fifth time their gazes accidentally met in their reflections and they both smiled awkwardly and muttered apologies, Jemma said, her voice sounding too cheery in the thick air, “You know, you’re the first person to ever know about me.”

He cocked his head to look down at her through narrowed eyes, a half-smile playing about his lips. “Bobbi and May?”

She shook her head. “Brought on at the same time as me. Mr. Wayne identified them, we formed a team, we’ve been together ever since.”

“So I’m your first,” Fitz mused, rocking back on his heels a bit.

Jemma waited until the elevator doors chimed open before she replied sweetly, “Well, your mum always _did_ say you were special.”

Fitz’s squawk of indignation echoed through the empty lobby as he chased her across the tiles.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: the fancy gala part 1!!


	5. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not convinced by this chapter's quality -- I wrote it by hand over several days while in conference sessions -- but I wanted to get it done and get us moving towards Fun Things. Hopefully still enjoyable!

The second week of September brought the first nip of fall weather and Jemma’s 30th birthday gala. She wasn’t entirely recovered, everyday movements still eliciting a twinge of pain across her features when she strained the healing of her shoulder, but after an examination, Bobbi reluctantly gave her clearance.

Fitz arrived at Jemma’s penthouse a couple of hours early, feeling slightly ridiculous in his tuxedo. He would ardently deny having put extra effort into his preparations tonight – he and Jemma were just _friends_ , no matter that they were now spending even more time together, no matter that Jemma increasingly got his attention with a gentle touch on his elbow or a light hand on his back, no matter that Fitz sometimes caught her looking at him with an opaque intensity that made something below his navel clench. So if he’d tried to tame his hair, if he’d shaved but not so much as to eliminate the scruff Daisy assured him made him look older, if he’d applied cologne and shined his shoes and eaten a half box of breath mints, it was because he didn’t want to embarrass Jemma in front of the city’s leaders. Only that.

The elevator opened right into Jemma’s living room, from which the hospital bed had now been removed. The lights were dimmed, but the bedroom door was ajar, so he moved towards it, calling softly, “Jemma?”

Receiving no answer, he rapped lightly at the door with one knuckle. “Jemma?”

“Fitz?” came Jemma’s voice, pitched slightly higher than usual. “Thank god you’re here, I’m in a bit of a bind.”

“Should I – ah – ”

“You can come in!”

Fitz readjusted his cuffs self-consciously and pushed the door further open.

It was a mark of just how successful Jemma’s company was that she donated most of the profits and _still_ had a bedroom who floor space and location alone were worth more than Fitz and Daisy’s apartment and everything in it and probably Fitz and Daisy themselves. Floor to ceiling windows with a view of Gotham that would’ve made Instagram collectively orgasm, a massive bed, a fireplace, several plush area rugs, and a softly tumbling artificial fountain down the surface of one wall.

“Happy bi—” Fitz just started to say, before he got the door open enough to see Jemma.

She was standing barefoot on the dark wood near the bed, her dress a silken puddle around her ankles. In lieu of her dress, she wore net stockings that covered _nothing_ and a thong that covered even less and apparently matched her teal bra, though Fitz jerked his gaze away before he could properly assess the similarities in material. But even the cursory glance that stuttered up her form as he stepped into the room caught the stretch of the net over her bum, the blossom of pale skin between the elastic top of the stockings and the underside of her bra, and the bloom of freckled breast pressing out of said undergarment.

 _Holy shit, Jemma. Now all my wet dreams for the foreseeable future will star fucking_ Batman!

Slapping a hand over his eyes, Fitz quickly whirled to face the door. “Ah! Sorry – didn’t mean to – I’ll just—”

“Don’t be silly,” Jemma said firmly. “I wouldn’t have called you in here if I didn’t want you to see this.”

“You – you _want_ me to—”

“It’s my dress,” Jemma huffed impatiently. “I can’t get it on without nearly pulling out my stitches. Normally Bobbi would help me but she’s gone to pick up May and I knew you were coming soon anyway. Would you help me?”

Fitz turned towards her voice but didn’t uncover his eyes. “Don’t you have some Batmachine that could do it for you?”

“ _Leopold Fitz—_ ”

“Alright, alright,” Fitz grumbled, peeling his fingers away one by one, then opening his eyes just a slit.

“Come on, then, we can’t be late for our own party,” Jemma coaxed, turning about so her back was to Fitz.  

 _Oh God that might be worse_. _Or not. She does have nice boobs. But that bum –_ Fitz cleared his throat violently and stumbled towards her. _You’re a goddamn member of the Gotham City police force, this isn’t anywhere near as dangerous things you regularly face on the streets._

Dangerous, maybe not, but decidedly terrifying.

He knelt behind Jemma and slid his fingers through the pile of plum-colored fabric around her ankles until he found the straps. His thumb accidentally brushed the jut of Jemma’s anklebone and she twitched slightly. “Sorry,” Fitz muttered. “Coming up.”

At first he tried raising the dress with his eyes closed, but then all he had to go on to guide him was the warmth of Jemma’s skin under his fingertips and that was _not_ safer. His eyes flew open just as he reached the gentle bumps of her spine at her lower back. He wished she would talk, would say _anything_ to break this excruciating silence, in which his own shaky breath sounded harsh and lecherous.

At her shoulders he hesitated.

“Um – right arm?”

Jemma obediently drew her right arm in, turning her head slightly to watch as he drew one silky strap over her shoulder and adjusted it over the strap of her bra.

The left proved more tricky, as Jemma didn’t have full mobility due to the wound at her left shoulder. She bent her arm and Fitz held her wrist with one hand as he gingerly helped her through the remaining strap.

“This okay?” he murmured.

Jemma hummed.

“Can you – your hair—”

She swept her hair up and away from her neck so Fitz could do up the clasp. He held his breath, hyperaware of the fine hairs and pale freckles. His hands were trembling so badly that he fumbled the delicate pieces of metal the first time he tried it, but the next time they slotted together and the dress fell properly along her back, a long strip of skin visible between the loose, draping sides.

“There you go, right as rain,” Fitz announced, using that phrase for the first time in his flustered state.

“Thanks, Fitz, you’re the best,” Jemma sighed, letting her hair switch into place and turning so quickly Fitz had to step back to avoid being chest-to-chest. This close, he could see a dusting of something sparkly across her eyelids and cheekbones and a faint lipstick that didn’t totally hide a freckle which bled over onto her bottom lip. “Well, don’t you look handsome!”

Realizing he’d been gawping at her lie some kind of prat, Fitz ducked his head, tugging at his lapels. “Do I look weird in this? I feel weird.”

“You look nice, that’s all,” Jemma reassured him. “Quite dapper.”

He grinned at her shyly. “Thanks, Jem.”

Her whole face shimmered in the overhead lights as she looked up at him. “You’re quite welcome.”

There then passed between them a moment quite unlike anything Fitz had ever felt in their friendship. He couldn’t bring himself to look away – and neither, implausibly, could Jemma. Gravity suddenly felt different, or maybe the air had thinned between them and the outer pressure was moving them together. Or maybe they were floating together through a force all their own.

A knock on the doorframe yanked Fitz back. The world beyond the two of them roared back into focus. Realizing how close they were standing, he rocked back a step.

“Hey,” Bobbi said from behind him, and Fitz finally looked away from Jemma, his face burning, feeling like he’d just been caught watching a porno by his mum. “May is here if you wanna run through the plan one last time.”

“Thanks, Bobbi, I just need to grab my shoes.”

Fitz snuck a glance at Jemma – she looked entirely unaffected. Maybe he’d imagined the momentary electricity between them?

He trailed her into the living room. May was standing at the table that formed the room’s centerpiece, a series of photographs spread on the surface.

“Wait – the plan?” Fitz asked stupidly, what Bobbi had said finally getting through his confused haze.

Jemma grimaced apologetically. “Something else you don’t know about my second life – I sometimes use parties, charity events, and conferences to advance our investigations and operations.”

Fitz felt his eyebrows fly up but he took a beat, hands on his hips. “Oh,” he said after a moment, figuring that was the safest reaction.

“Given your position in the police department, I’d of course understand if you’d rather recuse yourself from this briefing—”

“I think it’s a bit late for that,” Fitz said ruefully. May snorted in tacit agreement.

“We’re breaking the law, and by extension so are you, in aiding and abetting,” Bobbi reminded him, crossing her arms. Fitz felt a bit as if they were ganging up on him.

“And you’re lying to your fellow officers,” May added.

“But you might be saving their lives,” Fitz countered fiercely before they could continue. “I don’t love a lot about this, but I’ve weighed it and I’d rather help you help Gotham and deal with the fallout if it comes. What happened to Davis – I can’t let that happen to any more friends.”

“I’m glad you feel that way, actually,” Jemma said bracingly, “because that ambush on you and Davis wasn’t a singular event. We believe, based on a trend in crimes across the city from the past year, that Hydra wants to destabilize the GCPD and provoke them to act rashly. They want to make it personal. And if they’re escalating now, it likely means they’ve got something big planned, and they want to reduce GCPD’s threat. Which brings us to tonight,” she concluded, turning to May and gesturing for her to proceed.

All business, May directed her first question to Fitz. “You’ve heard of the Clairvoyant?”

“New head of Hydra, yeah.”

She nodded. “We’ve been following any hint about the Clairvoyant’s activities and reputation since the name first came into use, and we have reason to believe he or she is a member of Gotham City’s highest echelons. We’ve narrowed the suspects to fifteen, which is still too many, but some will be at tonight’s event. Acquaint yourself with their faces, names, and titles.”

She flipped the photographs one by one to face Fitz and Jemma. “Ian Quinn, industrialist. John Garrett, president of Gotham’s concerned citizens’ council. Rain, fashion designer. Dr. Francis Hall, president of Gotham City University. Anne Weaver—”

“Mayor Weaver?” Fitz protested. “No way.”

“We’re 95% sure she’s clean,” Bobbi interjected. But we just want to cover all bases.”

“Jiaying,” May continued, sparing Fitz a look that was no different from her other expressions but still somehow conveyed annoyance. “Chair of the board of education. Victoria Hand, district attorney. Antoine Triplett, assistant district attorney. Sunil Bakshi, host of Wake Up Gotham. Daniel Whitehall, founder of Gotham General Hospital. And Carl Kreel, director of public works.”

“So, basically, anyone who has any power or sway in this city,” Fitz groused.

The three women exchanged a look.

“That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but yes. We recognize it’s quite an open field. But it’s something from which we can proceed,” Jemma explained.

Not wanting to slow down their conversation and aware they were already adjusting their MO for his benefit, Fitz nodded. “So, what’s the plan?”

“It’s three-fold, but also seriously lacking,” Bobbi said grimly. “Firstly, and this is the most important to you, Fitz, is just to watch these people tonight. Try to act normal, of course, but be vigilant. One of these people is literally a criminal mastermind, and an event like tonight would be a perfect opportunity for something brash.”

“Part two is my job,” Jemma continued. Fitz glanced at her and found himself unprepared for the determined set of her jaw. “These events center on small talk. I’ll be mingling actively, and whenever I interact with one of our suspects, I’ll gear my language and references to them, seeing if we can suss out micro-reactions or slip-ups.” Catching the skepticism on Fitz’s face, Jemma smiled. “I know, it’s not exactly cut-and-dry detective work. But you’d be surprised how often it succeeds.”

“And if it doesn’t, we’ve got these.” Bobbi opened a small box displaying a series of clear strips, about the size of a stick of gum but thin as a dragonfly’s wing. “These are trackers, totally invisible and permanent on the skin for up to a week. They don’t emit a strong signal, but if we know where to look, we can determine whether any of our suspects have been visiting Hydra strongholds.” Turning to May, Bobbi peeled one strip away and laid it over the print of her thumb. “This is just the material, without the tracker tech. Jemma can put these on when she goes to speak to one of our suspects, then—” She shook May’s hand. “Transfer completed. It’s totally invisible and impervious to removal through water or friction.”

“This is brilliant tech,” Fitz marveled, watching Jemma take May’s hand and examine the back of it where Bobbi had rubbed her thumb. “Terrible, absolutely alarming, a severe violation of civil rights, but truly amazing.”

“Fitz was an engineer before he went to the police academy,” Jemma explained absently, still studying May’s hand. “He’s a bit of a tech wizard.”

“I’d love to consult with you on some of our projects,” Bobbi said to Fitz. “May and I have a lot of skills between us, but a fresh pair of eyes never hurts.”

“Yeah, that sounds great,” Fitz replied at once, eager both to get a look at more of their tech and to get to know Jemma’s colleagues better.

Clearly not one for group hugs, May interrupted the moment with a curt, “Time to go.”

The gala itself was held in the lobby of Jemma’s company’s tower. The space was nearly unrecognizable Fitz’s past visits: cocktail tables and plush chairs and artfully trimmed shrubs dotted the open floor, the lights were dimmed but still warm, and curtains in a shade of dark blue that Fitz associated with Jemma cascaded from the high ceiling and down the walls, making the room feel more insular.

Before they entered, Fitz asked Jemma, not entirely sure himself whether he was joking, “Do you want me to hover on your left side like a body guard, so no one accidentally bumps your hurt shoulder?”

Jemma’s nose wrinkled as she looked up at him with an indulgent smile. “That’s sweet, really. But I think I can handle it.”

“Oh, I know you can,” Fitz assured her. “From what I hear, you’re bloody terrifying when you need to be.”

“You’re lucky you’re on my good list. For now,” Jemma teased.

“For now!” Fitz made a show of audibly gulping and nervously adjusting the knot of his tie, watching with great interest how Jemma’s eyes followed his hands’ movements.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Jemma laughed, grabbing his lapel and tugging her towards the door.

He followed her willingly.

The instant they entered the party, Jemma’s whole demeanor changed, perhaps slightly enough that a lesser acquaintance would’ve have discerned the difference, but to Fitz it was apparent. Her back straightened, her smile became less natural – still lovely, but professional, level. It was the first time since Fitz had learned she was Batman that he was struck by her versatility and ability to work a situation, by how smoothly she could become someone else. It was a bit unnerving, but mostly it was intoxicatingly intriguing.

“I’m going to make an initial round,” Jemma told him, already looking about and toying with her clutch, which held the tracking strips. “I’ll find you in a bit?”

“Good luck!”

A pack of middle-aged women by the door were eyeing him somewhat hungrily, so Fitz gave them a strained smile before making a beeline for the bar.

“Just a water, please.” Jemma, still on some medications, wasn’t drinking alcohol, and though she’d roll her eyes if he told her as much, he’d decided to abstain as well in solidarity.

When the bartender passed him his glass, Fitz turned with his back to the bar, tracking Jemma’s movements with his eyes. She was already deep in conversation with Mayor Weaver and Dr. Hall.

“Quite a formidable woman, isn’t she?” the bartender commented, seeing the object of Fitz’s attention.

Fitz chuckled. “You have no idea.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: more from the gala (Jemma's POV) and Fitz's birthday gift for Jemma


	6. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *please note the rating change ;) *

Jemma didn’t like to brag. If she had, it would’ve made keeping a secret identity as Gotham’s hero marvelously difficult. So it was fortunate that humility was amongst her stronger traits, at least in the public eye.

But she also knew her worth and her skill, and she knew that smoothly applying trackers to seven (so far) suspects in just under two hours without raising suspicion was noteworthy. The trick, which she’d picked up from Bruce Wayne, was to stop thinking of one’s action as covert. Once she accepted that what she was doing was right – more often in a moral sense than a legal one – she stopped checking over her shoulder, stopped waiting to be called out. She coaxed each deception into normalcy, convinced herself it was as effortlessly necessary as a customary greeting or personal hygiene.

So while she knew better than to preen or behave oddly here at the gala, she was quietly bubbling with her own success, itching for the opportunity to tell her team how smoothly it’d gone down.

There were still a few trackers to be applied, but having the bulk of them completed allowed her a moment to breathe. The gala was still buzzing along, a meter projected on the wall providing updates as more and more donations poured in for the charity of the evening. Fitz kept Jemma supplied with Shirley Temples, her non-alcoholic drink of choice, but otherwise he mostly kept to himself, always nearby if she needed him but never impeding.  Even so, he’d proved a masterful distraction. Jemma’s gaze seemed to drift to him wherever he went: even amongst the big wigs, the models, the millionaires in their designer suits, something about him – or rather, _everything_ about him – drew her inexorably, unfailingly.

Her latest target had been Antoine Triplett, Gotham’s assistant district attorney. Jemma hoped he wasn’t involved in this Hydra business, if for no other reason than that he’d been one of the only city officials to take her seriously when she’d first founded her business. And he had the _most_ charming smile.

“We’re keeping busy, that’s for sure,” Trip was saying. “Tori says it’s the biggest swell of criminal activity she’s seen since she started as a paralegal. Not that we can get most of it to stick – the Hydra rank-and-file always have an alibi, a counter-witness, a slippery way out.”

Jemma smiled. Only Trip would get away with calling DA Victoria Hand _Tori_. “I’m sure that’s their strategy. Keep you and the GCPD busy with the small fish to distract from their head honchos.”

“Got any ideas who those head honchos might be?” Trip pressed, nudging her teasingly. “We could sure use a tip and everyone says you’re the biggest brain in town.”

“I’m sure I’ve no idea,” Jemma lied innocently, “and no one says that, Trip, honestly.”

“They do!” he insisted, laughing, those blinding teeth on full display. “You’re always on those damn ‘Thirty-Under-Thirty’ lists. Mayor Weaver talks about you like you’ve cured poverty.”

“I do my part,” Jemma demurred. “I know I’m fortunate to have what I do, and I’m grateful to Gotham for the life and friends it’s given me. It’s the least I can do.”

“You’re too diplomatic,” Trip groaned dramatically.

“Says the politician!”

“I prefer ‘humble public servant’, actually, Dr. Simmons.”

“Okay,” she chuckled, “I’ll let you have that one. Only because you’re one of the good ones.” – She hoped, at least.

Trip checked his watch. “Time to call it a night, I think, I’m on babysitting duty tomorrow. Which reminds me— My niece is _obsessed_ with your innovations in cell regeneration. She’s only ten, but she’s a real brainiac like you. Any chance I could weasel a private tour for her sometime?”

“Budding scientific minds are my third-favorite thing in the world, after empty museums at sunset and the perfect cup of tea,” Jemma assured him. “Call me anytime, I’ll show her around myself.”

Trip gave her a parting hug and snagged a mini pizza off a passing tray of finger food, then headed for the door. Ignoring her gut instinct that he wasn’t Hydra, Jemma texted Bobbi that at least one suspect was on the move and she should monitor the tracker.

She drifted easily to a nearby group, which included two targets she’d already tagged (Ian Quinn, one of her least favorite people in the room, and Jiaying, one of her favorite) and several ambassadors from Central American nations. As she slipped in at Jiaying’s side, Fitz joined the group simultaneously from the other side, seemingly by accident. He gave her an apologetic grin that made her insides turn upside down in a delightful way and cocked his head as if to ask, _Want me to go?_

Jemma shook her head, pretending to tune in to the conversation – Quinn was condescendingly explaining something to the ambassadors, who were obviously bored – while using the opportunity to watch Fitz. She hoped no one noticed the heated patches that appeared on her cheeks anytime he was nearby. Even from here she could smell his cologne, the way it curled around him somehow erotic. He was listening intently to Quinn, expression a bit skeptical. As she watched, he drew his lower lip in between his teeth before slowly releasing it. It reemerged pink and glistening and she envied his thumb as it came up to rub across the soft flesh. She wanted to take his lip between _her_ teeth, slide _her_ thumb across his mouth, tilt his head back and hover a millimeter away from him, enjoying the sensation of their open mouths panting so close before devouring him.

God, she was hard up.

She’d been trying for days – weeks now, at this point, since he’d learned her secret and she’d finally felt free to test the boundaries of their friendship. Light flirting at first, casual touches. Her move back at her apartment had been a new level of desperate. Near-nudity had seemed the safest bet to provoke a reaction from him. He’d practically short-circuited the first time Skye walked around their apartment in a towel, and he wasn’t even attracted to her, whereas Jemma was fairly surely she’d picked up on his attentions to herself, especially of late. If he hadn’t been able to recognize it as a cheap seduction ploy – the idea that she’d need assistance to get _dressed_ , _honestly_ – she’d need to step up her efforts. Or maybe he had seen it for what it was but didn’t see her that way? He _was_ hopelessly sweet and considerate, perhaps she’d misread everything. But still, before Bobbi had interrupted them, she’d thought she felt something – she’d thought she’d been about to receive the best possible birthday present.

A microexpression flitted across Fitz’s face, shaking her out of her daydream. His mouth twitched infinitesimally to the side, contorting like it always did in reaction to subtle criticism. Remembering herself, remembering her responsibility to be observing her _targets_ , not _Fitz_ , Jemma curled her hand into a fist to fight her arousal and turned her attention to what Quinn was saying.

“You guys know this as well as we do,” the industrialist rambled lazily, gesturing to the ambassadors, who did not look thrilled to in any way be considered sympathetic to Quinn. “The only way to beat these bastards is a hard line. That’s why you’ve all gone so gung-ho with your police crackdowns. None of that amnesty, forgiveness, rehabilitation crap. GCPD is too soft.”

Jemma and Jiaying shared a look. Quinn was clearly not on his first drink of the night, not that he generally needed alcohol to reach this level of filth.

“I say, start fresh,” Quinn continued, reaching to his left to roughly clap Fitz on the shoulder. “Fire the whole department, get a new commissioner in there, someone with actual balls – that Coulson guy is weak sauce. Weak sauce – you understand that? Whatever. The GCPD are a bunch of dumb-dumbs, if I had half a week I’d have Gotham cleaned up no problem.”

“As a member of the GCPD, I’d be very curious to hear how you propose to do that,” Fitz said, a clear challenge in his voice.

“No offense, man, but if you’re a police officer, you probably wouldn’t understand it anyway,” Quinn shrugged, mock-apologetically.

Fitz’s eyebrows shot up, but before he could bluster a response, Jemma interjected sharply, “I find your insinuation that our police officers are unintelligent misinformed, arrogant, and frankly pathetic. Fitz here was an engineer before he became a police officer—”

“Ah, Jemma, that’s—” Fitz scratched his ear with a slight wince. “That’s the second time you’ve said that tonight, technically I wasn’t an engineer, I studied engineering, I never actually got a job as a—”

“My point stands,” Jemma plowed over him. “Fitz could have chosen any career, his fellow officers could have found a dozen other positions less dangerous and with higher pay, but they _chose_ to defend this city. That’s not a cop-out, excuse the pun, it’s an act of incredible bravery and selflessness.”

The ambassadors watched gleefully as Quinn spun his attention fully on Jemma. “If they’re so damned intelligent and brave, why haven’t they fixed police brutality and mob violence, huh?”

“Intelligent people can be racist,” Jiaying interjected, Jemma nodding emphatically beside her. “They can be misguided and violent. In the same way, people you’d consider simple or below you may be some of the most caring and compassionate.”

“Exactly,” Jemma asserted. “You’re drawing a line of causation where there isn’t even the most tenuous correlation. Your argument is logically unsound.”

One of the ambassadors – from Guatemala, Jemma thought – smiled smugly at Quinn. “You should know better than to pick a fight with a scientist, Mr. Quinn.”

“No,” Fitz corrected, grinning with unashamed affection at Jemma, “he should know better than to pick a fight with Dr. Simmons.”

They all dispersed, leaving Quinn tilting slightly to the right and looking distinctly trampled.

“I’m so glad we’re past the days you turn that ire and verbal dissection on me,” Fitz said as they walked away.

“You’re just lucky you’re smart enough to know when to keep your mouth shut.” Jemma looped her arm through his, feeling daring.

Fitz looked down at her thoughtfully. “Have you ever considered running for mayor?”

Jemma laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not,” Fitz countered, stopping in his tracks so that Jemma spun a bit on their joined arms to face him. He was watching her seriously, almost as if he were analyzing her in a way he hadn’t thought to previously. “Weaver’s term is up in a few years, and Gotham needs someone they respect. You’ve got good relationships with every major government department and most of the major private sector entities, you’re Gotham born and raised, and lord knows you’re too clever for your own good.”

Jemma frowned down at their shoes, unsure why she’d kept this from Fitz for so long. “I have thought about it,” she admitted quietly, ignoring Fitz’s self-satisfied little hum. “But it’s a pipe dream, a goal for farther down the line – we both know I haven’t the time,” she reminded him significantly.

“The other day we spent three hours analyzing _The Last Jedi_ , even though we agreed on everything,” Fitz said skeptically. “No time, my arse.”

“That’s _different_ ,” Jemma sighed, ignoring the connections her birdbrain mind was making between three hours of free time and Fitz’s arse. “I’m not going to stop spending time with you to become mayor.”

“Course I don’t want to share you with the world,” Fitz murmured, sliding into her space so he could take her elbows gently. “But with Jemma Simmons as mayor, maybe Gotham wouldn’t need Batman.”

Jemma smiled at him coyly, wishing the rest of the party would drop away so she could just kiss him now. “You’ll never give that up, will you?”

“Not likely.” Retreating, he offered his arm again. “Now, Dr. Social Calendar, what differentiates a soiree from a gala?”

Jemma tilted her head, considering. “Well, the last soiree I held included dancing—”

Fitz shuddered. “Bloody nightmare.”

“Worse than Hydra goons?”

“By lightyears.”

Jemma rolled her eyes. “You’re the most cowardly brave person I know. Ooh look, apparently galas have chocolate fountains. Let’s go make ourselves sick.”

 

 

After the gala ended, Fitz told Jemma he’d left her birthday present at her penthouse and wanted to go back with her to explain it to her. Jemma could barely keep herself from jumping him in the back of the limo – surely this was a cockamie excuse to ‘come up to her place for coffee’ or whatever other thinly disguised excuse at sex people used. She started picturing Fitz appearing in her doorway entirely starkers but for a red bow over his privates. So she was disappointed when she pushed open her bedroom door to see there was, in fact a little wrapped gift sitting on her nightstand.

“Bobbi helped me,” Fitz explained, twisting his hands nervously as he watched Jemma unwrap it. “Biology’s not my forte and I didn’t want to get the balance wrong, make something caustic—”

Jemma turned the small silver container over in her hands. “It’s a very pretty box,” she said very seriously. “Thanks, Fitz.”

“Oh, give it here,” he grumbled, taking a seat next to her on the bed and unscrewing the lid. “It’s a salve of my own design, should increase the healing rate of any job-related injuries by 200%. Obviously not FDA approved, but between my theory and Bobbi’s expertise, it’s definitely safe.”

“Fitz, that’s brilliant!” Jemma gushed, leaving across his body to smell the salve. “Something like this has been on my list of personal projects for months, but other things keep cropping up—”

“Other things more important than your own health and safety?” he queried with an arched eyebrow.

“Oh, hush up and give it a go, then,” Jemma insisted, shifting around til she was facing him, her nearly-healed left shoulder towards him.

“Uh – oh,” Fitz stuttered, scratching nervously at his scruff with his free hand. “You want me to – now?”

“You came all this way to explain it to me, you might as well.” Jemma prided herself in how level and reasonable her voice sounded.

With a rapid nod, Fitz turned to face her as well, one knee tucked up across the bed, his other foot on the ground. After a moment’s hesitation he reached out to slide Jemma’s dress and bra straps down until her wound was visible.

“It’ll feel cold but it shouldn’t sting,” he advised her, taking a dollop of the salve onto three fingers. “Ready?”

Jemma nodded, watching his face. He was right – the stuff was bloody freezing, and she inhaled sharply, causing Fitz’s hand to twitch back from her skin, but she gestured for him to continue, and then he was touching her again, his fingertips making soft circles over her skin, his knuckles occasionally brushing the underside of her collarbone. Jemma bit her lip to keep from moaning.

Finished far too soon, Fitz pulled his hand back to examine his work, then screwed the container shut again and put it back on the table by the head of the bed. “It’s only for external use, Bobbi said to be sure to tell you that,” he mumbled, pulling out his pocket square to wipe his hand clean.

“Not edible, got it,” she nodded.

“Yes, but – erm – don’t – er – don’t use it for lube,” he finished, looking slightly mortified with himself.

 _Bobbi, you devious minx_ , Jemma thought gleefully. _Putting it in Fitz’s head to have a private conversation with me about lube._ “Shouldn’t be a problem, don’t have much  use for lube anyway, seeing as most of the time it’s just me and my fingers and even when it’s not I’m generally good to go, if you know what I mean,” she found herself rambling, leaning forward on one palm.

Fitz, meanwhile, looked positively alarmed, his entire face nearly as pink as his beautifully bowed lips. “Right. So. Won’t be getting you lube for Christmas, then. Best find something you actually need.”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Jemma practically purred, barely restraining herself from adding, _Like your tongue in my pussy_.

“I’ll just – go get started – on that,” Fitz said wildly, and he was off the bed so rapidly that Jemma nearly fell flat on her face. “Night! Happy birthday!”

The door was shut behind him before she could call after him, before she could deliver on the shameless way she’d been trying to throw herself at him.

With a groan of frustration, Jemma fell backwards onto the bed, letting her feet dangle off the edge. Either he was terrified of her, in which case she should seriously ratchet down the come-ons, or he was as turned on as she was but unsure how to deal with it, which would require some frank conversations, or perhaps some mouth-to-mouth. Maybe Bobbi had talked to him when they were working together to create the salve. Or perhaps he’d confided in Skye. She should really pay Skye a visit.

Her hands drifted down her stomach as she thought about the night. He really _had_ looked dashing. Catching the material of her dress, she hitched it up until the hem was above the line of her net stockings. The cool air against her legs reminded her just how flushed he’d left her. He couldn’t have any idea what affect he had, could he? He must know how attractive he was, what it did to her to watch him stretching after their runs or tumbling a coin across his dexterous fingers.

Her own fingers slipped inside the stockings and under the silken patch of her thong. She certainly wouldn’t need lube _tonight_. She closed her eyes and slid her thumb over her clit, pretending it was Fitz’s tongue. The thought set a shock of want zipping through her stomach. She imagined him coming back into the penthouse, in search of a forgotten house key. He’d look at her with that same startled desperation her comments about lube had provoke, but it would shift into affection and a dark lust she’d only ever dreamt he could inhabit. She wondered if he’d leave her heels on while he fucked her.

She came against her fingers with his name on her lips.

 


	7. Chapter 6

A few days after the gala, on one of Fitz’s rare days off from work, he sat in the kitchen of the apartment he shared with Daisy. He’d already done the Sudoku and the crossword in the newspaper and corrected the grammar in a few of the editorials, held a very one-sided argument with the radio correspondent, and done eighteen push-ups, his personal best. It was shaping up to be a great morning. So much so that even a knock on the door, which would normally shatter his tranquility with mile-a-minute thoughts ranging from _They’re here to arrest me for the murder I don’t remember committing_ to _Maybe I won a million dollars_ , didn’t disrupt him for a minute. He sauntered over, still whistling, and flung the door open jauntily.

Jemma smiled at him from the hallway. “Hi, Fitz.”

“J-Jemma!” He’d been thinking about her non-stop since they’d nearly descended into a pornographic scenario in her bedroom and still hadn’t determined how best to act around her. Openly flirtatious? Coy? Pure and gentlemanly? Ignorant? Confused and terrified?? “It’s – hi – you’re here? You’re _here_. Come in, I—”

He turned quickly away from the door, face burning, deciding awkward silence would be better than wherever he’d been going with that series of non-sentences. Jemma, seemingly unfazed, made herself immediately at home on the arm of the couch, legs crossed at the ankles, hands resting in her lap.

Despite his bewildered blustering, Fitz’s years of living with his mum kicked in. “Uh – can I get you something? We’ve got—” He pulled open the fridge and two of the cabinets. “Orange juice, soy milk, beer, and energy drink.” He winced. “Wouldn’t recommend combining any of those.”

Jemma laughed, and his chest contracted pleasantly, her comfort already putting him more at ease. He grinned crookedly at her as she shook her head. “I’m okay, thanks Fitz. I came to see Daisy, actually.”

“Oh.” Fitz dropped his hands to his hips, trying to rearrange his features to hide his disappointment. “Right.”

“You’re not my only friend, Fitz,” Jemma teased. She leaned sideways onto one palm, the pose doing unfair things to the way her shirt draped across her chest. Fitz bit the inside of his cheek to keep himself from whimpering. “As you said last week, sometimes you’ll have to share me.”

“Not if I can help it,” Fitz said without thinking, instantly cursing himself for sounding so possessive.

Jemma, though, didn’t seem the least bit perturbed. On the contrary, her eyebrows arched up and her tongue peeked from the corner of her mouth as she regarded him. “Oh _really_? And how do you plan to account for my other responsibilities? My company, my charity work, my crime-fighting?”

“Farm it out,” Fitz said carelessly, buying into their little game of pretend, ignoring the part of him that was conjuring images of endless days in bed with Jemma. “Computers can do everything these days anyway.”

“Fitz! You want to replace me?” she shot back with mock-indignation.

Fitz inhaled sharply through his nose, catching himself before he could say _Not possible_. “Don’t act like you wouldn’t enjoy the vacation.”

Jemma studied him, seeming to sense he’d held something back, but she didn’t comment on it. A bit of the fire gone from her eyes, she nodded. “I _am_ quite busy.”

“So you keep claiming,” Fitz challenged, “and yet I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen you actually do anything most of us would qualify as ‘work’.”

“Ah, that’s—” Jemma broke from his gaze, hunching over slightly, her bravado vanishing. “That’s the other reason I’m here. Bobbi gave me the go-ahead to go back to work. To my night job, that is.”

He didn’t like the way she peeked up at him nervously, as if she were expecting an adverse reaction. He cursed himself again for the harsh way he’d reacted upon first learning she was Batman, for making her think he didn’t believe in her, for making her think she needed to treat him with extra care.

He sat on the edge of the armchair across from her, so that she had the high ground.

“And?” he asked gently. “Do you feel ready?”

She looked over at him earnestly. “I do. In large part it’s thanks to you, Fitz, and your salve – reduced my recovery time significantly.”

“It’s not a magic potion,” he cautioned. “Don’t push yourself.”

Jemma considered him for a moment, and then something settled in her face, a determination that Fitz found simultaneously terrifying and very, _very_ hot.

She stood up and moved to the open space between the window and the kitchen counter. “Then try me.”

“What?”

“If you’re doubting my readiness to go back into the field, try to take me down. If you can beat me in a fight, I’ll continue my convalescence another week.”

Fitz chortled. “I’m not going to fight you, Jem.”

“Why not?” Jemma settled into her stance a bit, raising her hands in front of her chin. “Scared?”

“Of you? Never,” he lied. “ _For_ you, maybe.”

“You’re a chauvinistic prick if you think that just because I’m a girl—”

He was on his feet and taking his position opposite her before she could finish. He couldn’t have resisted – not only was he genuinely curious about Jemma’s fitness to be doing her Batman activities again, he couldn’t shake the feeling that she wanted to be close to him as much as he did to her, and this was her way of provoking it.

“I don’t know what’s worse,” he muttered, as Jemma bounced on her toes, a look of predatory delight on her face that he could only too well imagine hovering over him in much more salacious circumstances. “Being called a coward or a bigot.”

“Definitely a bigot,” Jemma breathed, eyes flicking to follow his movements. She made a half-hearted pass at his right side, just to make him shuffle a bit, to get things going. “I’d rather a coward any day.”

Fitz feinted to the left and ducked under her answering salvo, nearly catching her shoulder as he spun around her. “Is that why you dated Milton for so long?”

“Cowardice was the least of Milton’s problems,” Jemma snorted. She got in a kick to his hip and grinned as he hopped to the side. “But the number of girls who passed him over for his cabbage-shaped head just to go running to those meathead bullies—” She blocked a punch with her open palm and twisted Fitz’s arm until he yelped and yanked it free. “Power and muscles don’t make a man.”

On Fitz’s next forward drive, Jemma grabbed both his forearms with embarrassing ease, swept his legs out from under him with a pass of her foot, and followed him down as he fell with a thump onto his back.

“And power and muscles certainly stand no chance against a clever woman,” Jemma panted, her breath falling against his chin.

“Won’t fight you on that one,” Fitz squeaked. She still had his arms pinned next to his head and her knee was dangerously close to his crotch and all the interested anatomy thereat. “But don’t get cocky, I could still flip you if I wanted.”

Jemma scoffed. “As if!” Releasing his forearms, she sat up, her pelvis now pressed snugly against his own, her toned thighs tense on his hips. Fitz’s eyes nearly rolled back in his head. “Even _with_ full use of your hands, you’re prone in this position, Fitz.”

Fitz was a few pulses of his desperately horny heart away from sitting up on his elbows and kissing her when the front door opened again and Daisy walked in.

“Weeeeeelllllllll now,” she drawled, swinging to a halt a few feet into the apartment, grinning broadly and without a trace of shame. “You guys want me to come back in an hour?”

“I was just—” Fitz grunted and picked Jemma up by the hips, moving her to the side so he could roll free. “We learned some new moves yesterday—”

“At their weekly fight training, at the precinct,” Jemma added helpfully.

“Right, yeah, and I offered to show Jemma—”

“—While we waited for you to arrive!”

“In case she’s ever out alone in the city and needs to defend herself, you know.”

The forced, fixed smile Jemma turned on him made it very clear that this last little bit of machismo falsifying would cost him dearly in the near future.

“You never show _me_ how to defend myself,” Daisy observed, narrowed eyes still shifting back and forth between the guilty pair.

“No, no, I’m sure I have,” Fitz said, scratching nervously at one ear. “But, uh, Jemma, what did you want to talk to Daisy about?”

“Just girl stuff,” Jemma said dismissively. Fitz looked at her skeptically and she threw up her hands. “What? I’m a girl!”

“I know you are, just—”

“Fitz,” Daisy interrupted, looping her arm with Jemma’s and pulling a twenty out of her pocket. “Why don’t you go out for breakfast, let us catch up.”

He’d already eaten less than two hours prior, but he was hardly one to turn down a second breakfast, let alone a free one. And if they were about to talk about bra sizes or menstrual products or whatever else ‘girl stuff’ meant, they’d probably be fine without him.

“Alright,” he said reluctantly, accepting the money. “Just don’t talk about me, you hear?”

“No promises,” Jemma and Daisy said at the same time, then dissolved into cackling laughter.

“Bloody hell,” Fitz muttered as he rushed out the door. “I have the worst taste in friends.”

He was halfway down the stairs before he realized Jemma had used his name an inordinate number of times in their relatively short conversation. That was a flirting tactic, wasn’t it? That was _definitely_ a flirting tactic.

He practically skipped the rest of the way to the corner bakery.

 

 

Eleven o’clock that night found Fitz still wide awake. He’d begged Coulson for an extra shift, not so he could check up on Batman – that would probably just get both of them in trouble – but to have something to do, a distraction, a purpose, something that would keep him from fretting over Jemma’s first night back on the streets.

But here he was, sitting at his desk in his pajamas, designing a maze on a piece of scrap paper by the light of a small lamp. He felt buzzed, too aware of everything to sleep. It was miserable – but he wouldn’t have traded it for a returning to ignorance about Jemma’s secret identity, not for all the sleep in the world. (And Fitz _loved_ sleep.)

A soft sound out on the fire escape made him start, and he looked around to see a looming figure, all in black, directly outside his window.

He shrieked and fell backwards in his chair.

“It’s me, Fitz!” Jemma hissed once she’d gotten the window open.

“Jesus Christ’s sacred goblet of fire,” Fitz choked, scrambling to his feet and showing her his hands, which were still shaking. “No wonder people talk about you like an avenging angel, that was bloody petrifying!”

“Good!” Fitz could only see Jemma’s mouth and chin and a bit of her eyes shining through her mask, but she was obviously grinning. She sat on his windowsill, her cape draped elegantly beneath her, and patted the space next to her for him to join. “Were you waiting up worrying about me?”

“No,” Fitz denied vehemently. “I had very important things – stuff – ”

“Clearly,” Jemma smirked, taking the maze from him. “Is this the GCPD’s new torture plan for convicts? Put them in an unsolvable corn maze?”

“Hardy har,” Fitz grumbled, snatching it back from her and tossing it off into the darkness. “You’re the least supportive superhero best friend I’ve ever had.”

“Had a lot, then?”

“Tons. Uncountable. Apparently they’re really decreasing in quality, though. Originals are always better.”

“You’re a prat,” Jemma sighed fondly. “Nice pajamas.”

Ignoring the last, he prodded, “Shouldn’t you be out there, meting out justice to sinners and sadists?”

“In a minute,” she said comfortably. “I wanted to clear the air with you first.”

Fitz wrinkled his nose. “Bit of an odd expression, isn’t it? Clear the air? Sounds like someone tooted.”

Jemma’s head dropped back between her shoulders as she groaned. “Would you shut up for _one minute_? I’m trying to be bold here.”

Fitz folded his hands and sat primly at attention, waiting obediently. Jemma rolled her eyes.

“First, I wanted to say, I know we’ve been joking a great deal about how terribly occupied I always am and how I can barely keep up with everything and while there is of course a grain of truth to that, it’s imperative that you know that that doesn’t apply to you, Fitz. You’re a priority. You always have been, and that’s not to change, no matter what else shifts in my life.”

His mouth was open, he realized, but he was too startled by her seriousness to shut it properly.

“So. That was agenda item #1. Secondly, and equally as important, I had a very enlightening conversation with Daisy this morning.”

This time his jaw shut with a painful click. Fitz swallowed. His heart was throbbing. This was the moment – the moment she let him down easy.

“Can you – um – can you take that off?” he asked, gesturing to her mask. “It’s just a bit – odd, having this conversation with Batman.”

“Oh! Of course!” Jemma undid the straps on the mask and let it fall around her neck. Now Fitz could see the earnestness of her gaze, and it just made the yearning stronger.

“So, uh, what did you and Daisy talk about?” he asked quietly, ducking his head to look at his hands.

Jemma was silent, and he started to look up but then she was there, her face before his, illuminated on one side by moonlight, and she took his face in her gloved hands and kissed him.

It was soft, a feather’s touch, her lips gentle against his lower one for a breath before she drew back.

Fitz exhaled shakily, tears pricking against the rims of his eyes caught his newly Jemma-loved lip in his teeth and looked up at her. She looked as nervous as he’d felt a moment ago, her scared hope plain on her face.

“Well, that was long overdue,” he murmured, tilting his head forward until he could rub his nose against her cheek.

Jemma laughed breathlessly. “I’m so glad you agree.”

Their next kiss was a bit of a mess as they were both smiling giddily, but judging by the way Jemma scooted closer to him on the sill and parted her lips against his, she didn’t seem to mind. For Fitz’s part, though still a bit in awe that this was even happening, he felt a rush of sureness, of _meant to be_ , of _ah, of course, after all this time_ , and he made sure to tell Jemma so silently, passionately, as best he could.

Far too soon, Jemma sighed into his mouth and withdrew, still holding his jaw in one hand. She pressed in for a last, lingering kiss, just the tip of her tongue brushing his upper lip, and then she whispered, “Sweet dreams, officer.”

Fitz stood out on the fire escape long after her cape had whipped from sight. The cool night air helped calm the flush in his cheeks but did nothing to diminish his loopy, incredulous grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was so so so important to me that their first kiss happen while Jemma's suited up. Don't know why. Just was.


	8. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I hate writing plot lololol. it takes up all my energy and then i can't write the fun parts as fluffy and magical as i want. Kudos to raptorlindsay and dilkirani for some major brainstorming assists on this one.

The morning after their soft, moonlit kisses in Fitz’s bedroom, Jemma watched with amusement as the little typing ellipses hovered next to his name on her phone for a full thirty minutes. She thought about putting him out of his misery, sending the first message, but she knew how finicky Fitz could be about using _just_ the right words, and she couldn’t help enjoying the mental image of him surrounded by his friends or fellow police officers, all coaching him through the proper text.

When she returned from a lunch meeting to find he’d _still_ not hit send, she began to worry. What sort of novel of rejection was he writing? Or maybe he’d fallen asleep with his finger on the chat bar and wasn’t actually intending to contact her at all today.

It did a great deal of good for her blood pressure and her ability to concentrate on the R&D proposals she was perusing when, shortly after two o’clock, her phone finally vibrated.

_F: Hey. Thanks for the visit last night. If you’re not busy, would you maybe want to get dinner tonight? Somewhere nice, I mean_

Jemma grinned to herself, doing a little dance in her desk chair.

_J: I’d like that!_

His answer came straight away – breathlessly, if a text could be breathless.

_F: Brilliant, what time do you get off?_

_J: I should be done about six, I can meet you at the restaurant_

_F: I’ll start looking up some places to run by you_

_J: Thanks Fitz! <3 <3 _

She nearly considered deleting the hearts, but they were something she’d have used before their friendship got complicated anyway, and she certainly didn’t want to seem less eager than she actually was. And she was – eager, that is. Very, very eager. And not just to finally explore Fitz’s kissing prowess in more detail, or to know how his hands felt on her body, or to be privy to the little noises of pleasure he made when properly stimulated. All that was enticing, certainly, but she was equally eager to know how he blinked blearily in the morning sunlight when he just woke up and to listen to his mumbling thoughts on the day as he fell asleep and to be able to love him openly every minute of the days in between.

No, with the initial run-around dance out of the way, Jemma intended to be quite clear with Fitz about where she stood.

So she left the hearts.

 

 

She’d worn a pair of black skinny jeans and a button-up blouse to work, so she just changed out of her sensible lab shoes into a pair of flats before meeting Fitz at the restaurant. He stood up from a bench outside the door as she approached, and Jemma flushed under his gaze, wanting to duck her head or tuck her hair nervously behind her ear, but the expression on his face was also something of which she didn’t want to miss a second.

“Hi,” Fitz murmured, retracting his hands from his pockets. “It’s – uh, it’s good to see you.”

He leaned forward, seemed to think about giving her a quick kiss on the lips or the cheek, then settled for a hug that lingered a moment longer than was platonic.

“There’s a bit of a wait for our table,” he explained apologetically, “but they said we could wait at the bar.”

He led the way into the restaurant, and Jemma gasped as he pushed aside the red velvet curtain across the entrance.

“Fitz!” she marveled, gripping his arm. “This place is beautiful! I’d heard good things, but – I feel underdressed!”

“You never looked underdressed,” Fitz muttered, blushing from his collar up to his hairline.

“Do you always go this all-out for a first date?” Jemma asked, sliding her hand around his elbow so their arms were looped. Fitz seemed exceedingly content with this arrangement and let her go reluctantly as they reached the bar and took a pair of stools near the front window.

“Only when it’s a first date that really matters,” he admitted.

Jemma felt her throat constrict. “Fitz,” she whispered, reaching a hand across the bar to him.

He shrugged, but his mouth twitched in a pleased little smile as he looked over the restaurant’s cocktail specials. “I’m just glad you could make it. I know how much you’ve got on.”

“Martini, please,” Jemma told the bartender. Fitz held up two fingers to ask for the same, then continued to fiddle with the menu as Jemma talked. “Fitz, I meant what I said last night. You are a priority in my life, whatever else happens. That was true before and it’s certainly true now, as we… move forward. It’s important to me that you understand that.”

“Yeah, I wanted to talk to you about that,” Fitz nodded, turning full to face her, leaning on the bar with one elbow and setting his other hand on his knee so that his fingers nearly brushed Jemma’s leg. “That and the, uh…” He exhaled tremulously. “The other thing, from last night.”

“You mean when I kissed you?”

“Hey, I kissed you back,” Fitz protested. “It was decidedly mutual.”

“I noticed,” Jemma grinned, sliding forward an inch on her stool so her knee slotted between his. “I was rather relieved.”

“What,” Fitz scoffed, “you weren’t actually _nervous_ about it, were you?”

“Well, after Daisy told me you always said my name with a notable fondness and that you always came home from seeing me as if you were walking on sunbeams, I felt fairly confident that my attentions were returned. But I couldn’t be totally sure.”

She expected Fitz to deny it, to groan and make half-hearted threats about how he’d punish Daisy for the infraction, but he bit his lip a bit impishly and looked up at her through long eyelashes. “My moony-eyed looks didn’t give it away?”

This time it was Jemma’s turn to shrug. “You’ve always been a bit moony.”

“Only for you.”

Their martinis arrived at this moment and Jemma was torn between kicking Fitz in the shin for the sheer cheesiness of his lines and shoving the drinks aside to snog him right there against the wood countertop. She settled for clinking her glass against his and toasting, “To last first dates.”

Fitz choked a bit on his martini, but the pink splotches in his cheeks were offset by the ridiculously sappy grin he couldn’t seem to keep down. Jemma wasn’t judging – the sides of her own face were starting to hurt from smiling so much.

After a minute of comfortable silence as they sipped their drinks – Jemma handed Fitz her olive; she wasn’t a fan – Fitz tapped her knee lightly with one finger. “How was work? Have you gotten past the inhibitor issue?”

“You remembered,” Jemma smiled. “Not yet, but I think we’re close – Levine, one of our newer hires, has brought a marvelous perspective to the project. I think I told you about her research on replication?”

And they were off, just like the many casual lunches or greasy spoon late-night dinners or takeaway meals at one of their apartments. Gone were the butterflies and the bubble of newness and uncertainty. It was just them again, trading thoughts on Jemma’s work and Fitz’s cases and Daisy’s latest boyfriend. It was the same as it had always been, except that their knees were pressed together and their faces were mere inches apart and Jemma was tracing Fitz’s palm with her fingertip as they talked.

They were so engrossed in each other that they’d not even finished their martinis when the host came to find them forty-five minutes later to escort them to their table. Jemma stood, reaching for both their glasses to carry with them to their seats, but Fitz, halfway off the stool, started struggling to extract his phone from his pocket.

“Blasted thing’s been buzzing for the last half hour, I’ve no idea what—Hello?” he said gruffly into the phone, rolling his eyes apologetically at Jemma. “Oh – Bobbi? Yeah, she’s right here, hang on—“ Covering the mouthpiece, he whispered to Jemma, “You turned your phone off?”

She handed him their drinks so she could take the phone from him. “I told you, I’m serious about making time for you. -- Hi Bobbi, can this wait, I’m a bit—Oh. Oh, bloody hell. That’s – balls. No, it’s alright, I’ll be right there. Send me the location.”

Fitz’s loopy grin had slipped into a disappointed frown as she talked.

“Of course this would happen now,” Jemma sighed, rubbing at the crease in her forehead. “I don’t know why I thought we’d possibly get a night’s peace—”

“What is it?” Fitz queried, setting the glasses back on the bar and following her to the front door.

“The trackers,” she explained, keeping her voice low and scanning in all directions once they were outside on the sidewalk. “One of them showed up at a warehouse Hydra controls. Bobbi thinks I can still catch them. Fitz, I’m – I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this. For anything else I’d ask Bobbi or May to handle it, but – if this is the Clairvoyant, this is our best shot yet.”

“No, no, ‘course, I get it,” Fitz assured her. “Honestly, Jemma, don’t worry about it. This was our opening salvo, our prelude – we’ll figure it out as we go.”

“But I owe you a dinner,” Jemma said firmly, starting off towards the next corner, Fitz hurrying to keep up. “Now, if we take 15th, I can drop you at your apartment before heading to the wharf—”

“Don’t be ridiculous, that would be the opposite direction, it’d add twenty minutes you can’t afford to waste. I’ll go with you.”

“I’m not putting you in danger!”

“I’ll just – stay in the car, or something,” Fitz suggested.

“Well, that’s a nice idea, but I didn’t come with a car. I’ve only got the bike.”

“By bike you mean—”

Jemma knelt to undo the latch on a garage door set into one of the alley’s brick walls, then slid the door up to reveal her motorcycle.

“I can still call you a cab.”

“What if you need backup?”

“You said you’d stay in the car.”

“If you’re going to make me get on that death machine, I think I get to come inside with you.”

“I’m not _making_ you—” Jemma huffed and threw up her hands. “We don’t have time for this. Are you coming or not?”

“You better have two helmets,” Fitz muttered.

Jemma opened the compartment under the bike’s seat and pulled out her cape, leather jacket, mask, boots, and breastplate. A spare bulletproof vest and black mask she tossed to Fitz. “You’ll want these as well.”

“I look like a bloody bank robber,” Fitz grumbled, but he tugged them on.

Once Jemma was suited up, she pressed a black helmet into Fitz’s hands, but she didn’t let go right away. Studying his eyes (the only part of his face still visible behind the cloth mask) in the dim light from the alley’s few streetlamps, she was grateful, not for the first time, that of all the best-friends-turned-potential-boyfriends she could’ve chosen, she had one brave and smart enough to hold his own with every aspect of her work. “Ready to go on a date with Batman?”

Jemma had never had a passenger on her motorcycle before, and despite the seriousness of what she was about to do, she couldn’t help enjoying the way Fitz clung desperately to her waist as they tore through the city or the way he cursed when she made particularly sharp turns. She’d always preferred the bike to the Batmobile, just for the thrill of it, the rush of wind, the way it allowed her to brush right up against the city. With Fitz’s breath against her neck and his body pressed all along her back, it was a pure adrenaline rush.

She parked the bike in some shadows a few blocks from the warehouse. Fitz stumbled off it, walking a few paces like a pregnant woman as he tried to stretch out his hips.

“If we weren’t undertaking a very delicate operation right now, I’d tell you off for being a bloody terrifying driver,” he hissed, tugging the balaklava down so his lips jutted out as he spoke.

Jemma stuck her head around the corner, evaluating the empty street, then pressed Fitz up against the wall, a hand on his chest to hold him in place. “Fitz, I’m going to be quite firm now, and I need you to listen carefully. This is not police business. This is _my_ operation, and we do it on my terms. You obey any order I give you, whether to run or hide or leave me behind – I’m serious,” she warned, as he made to protest. “I know it’s seemed like fun-and-games spy work til now, but we’re dealing with dangerous people, dangerous people who won’t hesitate to kill you. This is my turf. You’re here because I let you be here. Do you understand?”

Fitz cleared his throat. “Yes ma’am.”

“Good.” She let him go and offered him a compact pistol. “Take this. It’s non-lethal – they’ll just be knocked out for a bit. But don’t use it unless absolutely necessary. Don’t lose it. And whatever you do, do _not_ reveal you’re a cop.”

At Fitz’s curt nod, she clicked on the voice modification on her mask and gestured for him to follow.

The large delivery door was padlocked shut, but Jemma eased her way along the wall to a smaller door, from beneath which a sliver of light was visible. She could feel Fitz behind her, but she couldn’t hear him – not his breathing, not the crunch of his footsteps. Though new to illicit vigilante justice, he was definitely trained for the job.

Her hand on the handle, she signaled to him to cover her as she entered.

A first sweeping glance showed rows and rows, stacks and stacks of wooden crates, as far as she could see in the warehouse. A half-dozen men in protective clothing and goggles were grouped around a long table, a seventh man in a suit by their side; they all looked up as she entered and started back in surprise.

“Sir!” one man cried out, just as Jemma’s first shot hit him square in the chest.

Before Fitz could even react, she’d knocked out the other five workers, and strode across the room, flipping her gun so she gripped the barrel and used it to strike the suited man twice across the face. He fell, a bloody gash across his temple, and scrambled backwards, trying to reach the relative cover of the first row of crates.

“Where is the Clairvoyant?” Jemma growled, grabbing his lapels and dragging him into the full glare of the overhead lights.

“I’m sure I have n-no idea what you’re talking about,” sneered the man, attempting to smooth back his black hair even as he stuttered through a split lip.

“Who are you?”

“I am Sunil Bakshi, this is a respectable business establishment—”

Still holding him in one hand, Jemma grabbed a glass slide from the nearby table and shoved it towards Bakshi’s face. He recoiled, shuddering as a whiff of the off-white powder on the slide drifted onto his suit. “What respectable business is this, exactly?” Jemma demanded.

“Pharmaceutical—”

Jemma replaced the materials on the edge of the table delicately, then released Bakshi, even dusting his front off for him with her gloved fingertips. “Well, I’m sure this is all a tragic misunderstanding. Can’t blame me for trying. No hard feelings?”

She extended a hand, and Bakshi smirked, reaching up for the help up. The second he gripped her hand, Jemma brought the butt of her gun firmly down on his head, reducing him to an unconscious crumple on the floor.

Breathing heavily, she looked around at Fitz, who was still standing with one foot out the door and one just inside. He was watching her with wide eyes.

“Was that not a bit… preemptive?” he asked tentatively. “You barely got any information, nothing about the Clairvoyant—”

“I didn’t need to,” Jemma sighed, tucking her gun into her side holster and approaching the table. “I learned something far more sinister.”

Fitz joined her, studying the powder and the various chemicals and equipment lined up across the table. “Drugs?”

“I wish,” Jemma whispered. “Did you see the way he winced when I brought it near him? He wouldn’t have done that if it were cocaine. It’s a weapon.”

Fitz quickly stepped back, checking himself to see if he’d touched any of the stuff. “Chemical warfare?”

Jemma nodded grimly. “I’ll report this anonymously to the GCPD but this can’t be their only base of operations. They’ll relocate, regroup, keep going. And they’re not just planning a coup. They’re preparing for a massacre.”

Hands on his hips, Fitz regarded the evidence, curling his bottom lip in slightly as he thought. “What if you _didn’t_ report it? Right now it’s the best option you have to monitor their movements. If you report it you lose that edge.”

“No, that won’t work, that’s what they expect.” Jemma glanced sideways at Fitz. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that to sound so harsh. It’s just – as long as we’ve been chasing Hydra, they’ve always been three steps ahead. They know this warehouse is compromised now, they won’t risk using it again. But I appreciate the suggestion.”

They walked back to the motorcycle in subdued silence. Jemma was brimming with fear and anger at their discovery, but she was equally nervous about what Fitz must be thinking of her behavior in there. He wasn’t accustomed to her punch-first-ask-later approach, her ruthlessness. It was necessary for this job – she’d tried being a negotiator at first and nearly lost her life a few times – but she wasn’t sure he’d see it that way.

He still didn’t say anything when they’d parked the motorcycle back at her center of operations, nor as he handed her the helmet and mask. He walked away, head down, hands on his hips, and Jemma felt a nauseous twist in her gut. Had she lost him already? – Not only as a boyfriend, but perhaps more crucially, as a friend?

She wanted to give him space to process everything, but she was also aware she’d made herself a promise not twelve hours before to be straightforward with Fitz, as much as possible.

Twisting her leather jacket in her fists, she said determinedly, “I can only imagine what you’re thinking and feeling right now – when I first saw Bruce Wayne in action – I’m sure it seems unnecessarily ruthless, Fitz, but I promise you—”

At last he turned to face her, looking adorably confused. “What? No, Jem, I wasn’t judging _you_ , I was – I was judging myself,” he laughed bashfully. “Back there, when you were telling me what to do, and when you were, um, _interrogating_ that man, it was – bloody hell, I was – is it weird that I found that attractive?”

Relieved, Jemma considered him with a saucy grin. “If I say yes,” she said slowly, “can we still make out in the back seat of the Batmobile?”

Fitz tripped over himself running to open the car door for her.


	9. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> have i mentioned i hate plot? i continue to hate plot. but here i tried to write some plot. (i patted myself on the head for getting this finished)

Fitz strolled into the precinct after a blessedly uneventful day of patrolling, humming a bit to himself, thinking of the movie he and Jemma had watched the night before – or rather, the movie that had ended up being background noise for their enthusiastic sofa snogging until Daisy came home. He couldn’t _actually_ remember the middle act. There might’ve been a flying iguana. But he didn’t much care, as he knew ten years from now he’d have forgotten the name but the memories of Jemma writhing sinuously beneath him would forever be burned into whatever primal part of his brain was in charge of sex dreams.

Of course, once Daisy had shown up, they’d carefully sat at opposite ends of the couch, pretending to focus on the film while they regained their breath and, in Fitz’s case, scrunched a pillow over his lap and glowered at his roommate. He’d _told_ Jemma they should hang out at her apartment instead, but she actually seemed to _like_ his cramped, dim little flat. She said it felt like _him_ , whatever that meant. Her face when she’d said it – a little embarrassed but vulnerable and soft – had actually been what’d started the snogging in the first place. She _liked_ him. She really, really did.

“Hey, loverboy,” Piper called, hitting his arm with a file folder as he passed her desk.

“Wha – what?” Fitz stuttered.

“Oh, c’mon, Fitz, like it’s not patently obvious,” she snorted. “You’ve had a dorky little smile on your face all week. You’re clearly getting some.”

From anyone else but Piper, Fitz might’ve been offended, but her ribbing was always jovial and supportive, as much as lewd commentary could be supportive. “I – I am not!” he protested, and truthfully. Dating Jemma was _brilliant_ , kissing Jemma was _brilliant_ , and every bit of him, from his bird brain to his lips to his alarmingly reactive cock, was very excited to learn just how brilliant sex with Jemma could be, but as of yet, they’d not proceeded past a little dry humping. Which, of course, had been _brilliant._ Frankly, sometimes he felt so chuffed just to sit pressed against her on the same side of a booth at dinner, he wasn’t even sure he needed sex. (Not that he’d say _no_ , should Jemma throw herself at him…)

She studied him as he flopped into his seat, facing her across their desks. “Don’t hold out on me, Fitz, who is she?”

He glanced down at his desk, but he wasn’t quick enough to hide his grin. Just the _thought_ of Jemma made him giddy.

Piper laughed out loud. “Do not _ever_ go undercover, my man, your poker face is terrible.”

“Maybe I don’t want to hide it,” he shrugged, flipping open his daily reports.

“Damn,” Piper breathed. “She’s that beautiful?”

“No, she’s – I mean _yes_ , she _is_ that beautiful, but it’s not – she’s just that – she’s – she’s my best friend,” he finished helplessly. “I could explain it, but we’d be here all day.”

Piper, whose teasing face had melted into something tragically adoring and was clearly set on grilling Fitz for more details, was fortunately thwarted by the arrival of Joey Gutierrez, lead detective.

“You guys hear about Catwoman?” he asked without preamble, sitting on the edge of Fitz’s desk.

“Did she catch Batman, knock him about between her paws for an hour, and then get bored and leave him half-dead on her owner’s bed?” Piper guffawed. At her colleagues’ blank looks, she sighed, “Get it? Because they’re a cat and a bat?”

“It’d really work better if it were Ratman, or Mouseman—” Fitz mused, already grabbing for a pen to sketch what sort of costume Mouseman would wear.

“No, guys, she was outed! By one of her best friends. Guess she revealed her identity to someone, some guy she was into, but instead of the awed reaction she expected, he turned around and told the press.”

Piper whistled softly. “That’s cold.”

Fitz, feeling a bit flushed, scooched his seat forward, wondering if it’d be too obvious to recuse himself from the conversation and start to fill out his patrol report.

“I get the frustration about being lied to, finding out your friend has this whole other life, whatever,” Joey was saying. “But if I found out _my_ friend and crush was a superhero, I would get _on_ that.”

This gave Fitz pause. He frowned and looked up. “What?”

“Oh, yeah, for sure,” Piper nodded in agreement. “Superheroes are _hot_. That’s just a fact. It’d be like finding out your friend is the Princess of Genovia or something. Instant hotness makeover.”

“One day he’s just the cute guy next door,” Joey said dreamily, “the next day – _bam_! Dripping sex.”

“No,” Fitz scoffed, so thrown off by what they were suggesting that he didn’t even bother to be slightly alarmed by the depths to which their workplace conversation had descended. “That’s not – that’s not a thing. If someone’s attractive, they’re _attractive_ , whether they wear a cape or not, right?”

“Oh, Fitz,” Joey sighed. “Oh, sweet naïve Fitz.”

Before Fitz could investigate further, the door to Commissioner Coulson’s office flew open. “Fitz!” Coulson called. “My office, now.”

Leaving Joey and Piper to their depravities, he hurried into the Commissioner’s office, barely shutting the door behind him before asking, “Sir, have you received—”

“Still waiting on the exam results,” Coulson cut him off, gesturing for him to sit. “I promise, Fitz, I’ll call you the second I get them.”

“Right,” Fitz nodded, drying his hands on his trousers. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay, I’m glad to see you’re so eager. Makes me think what I have to ask you might not be _quite_ as out of left field as I’d feared.” With a weary sigh, he took off his reading glasses and folded them carefully before looking back up at Fitz. “I’ve held off on this as long as I could, but I’m getting a ton of pressure from the city government. They’re threatening to slash our budget in _half_ if I don’t deliver. And I know you don’t have the highest arrest rates, Fitz, but I’ve watched you work with civilians and I can tell you hit that balance better than our more zealous officers. Which is why I’m nominating you for the task force.”

“The – sorry, sir, I’m not following,” Fitz admitted.

“They’re putting together a Batman Task Force, aimed at bringing in and eliminating the masked marvel. And I want you to be the GCPD’s representative.”

Fitz’s stomach plummeted clear through the linoleum floor.

 

 

He’d been pacing Jemma’s living room for near on fifty minutes before the elevator doors slid open. Jemma herself took three paces into the room, her attention on her phone, before she noticed him, standing there, still in his police navy, surrounded by tiers of white candles and vases of lilies and with a bottle of wine chilling on the coffee table, containers of Chinese food artfully arranged around it.

“Fitz!” she exclaimed, hanging up her coat and purse and crossing the room to him, smiling coyly. “Isn’t a bit early to be proposing? Did you make all this?” she teased, pointing to the Chinese food.

“Calm your dragons, Batman, I’m not proposing,” he muttered, though the idea settled not unpleasantly somewhere left of his lungs. “I just needed to talk to you about a couple things. Bobbi let me in, I hope that’s okay—”

“Of course,” she waved him off. “You know, I’ve always liked your uniform. With you in that and me in my outfit, we could make some really weird porn.”

“Okay, can we – let’s sit and talk about my things before you start derailing me like that.” He guided her to one of the couches, where he sat sideways, one leg crooked up on the couch so he could face her, holding her hands in his lap.

Jemma toed off her flats and joined him, sitting pretzel-style on the cushion next to him. “I estimate we’ve got about twenty minutes of chat time before we need to address the food on the agenda,” she informed him seriously.

“Right. Well. First thing’s first.” He took a deep breath and let it out with a rough vibration of his lips, then shook his head. There was nothing for it. “Coulson called me into his office today.”

“You made sergeant?” Jemma interrupted hopefully.

Fitz leaned forward to kiss her nose. “Bless you, but no. Not yet. He had a new position for me. Not a promotion, exactly – it’s an unpaid appointment. On a task force. A task force set up by the city government. To track you.”

He’d stopped stroking her knuckles at some point in his disjointed announcement, and now he just held her hand, grimacing slightly as he waited for her reaction.

To his surprise, Jemma just sighed and rolled her head on her neck wearily. “Well, we knew it was only a matter of time. But damn if it won’t be a pain. Hydra on one side, Gotham City on the other—”

“You’re not – mad?” Fitz queried gently.

“It’ll take a lot more than that to piss me off these days, Fitz,” she assured him, twisting her hand so she could link their fingers. “It’s a pain for you, of course, but I won’t try to sway you on whether to accept the appointment or not. Honestly, if they could just hold off a few more weeks – we’re close, I swear,” she insisted, meeting his eyes with a hint of excitement. “We’ve ruled out Weaver and Jiaying and Hall – they were all out of the city on the night our tracker registered at the warehouse.  Between May combing the communications systems and Bobbi analyzing every bit of forensics I can scrape together, we’ll have the Clairvoyant soon.”

“Ah!” Grinning proudly, Fitz let go of her hand so he could reach into his breast pocket. “Now there, I can actually contribute. Coulson mentioned that there were city leaders pressing for this task force, and I did a little pressing of my own and got him to actually tell me which particular leaders. Figured the Clairvoyant would likely be among them.”

“Good thinking, Fitz!” Jemma gushed, taking the paper from him to study the names written thereon. “It’s not hard and fast evidence, of course, but it can help us concentrate our efforts. A lead, as I think you police folk would call it,” she added, smirking at him as she refolded the paper and tucked it under the vase. “Was that it? Can we eat now? I’m starved.”

“Oh. Uh – no, there was something else. I—” Now that he was about to say it, Fitz was feeling decidedly silly. It was probably an overreaction to idle gossip and he felt fairly sure Jemma knew already anyway. But he’d gone to all this trouble to make the place look romantic, he might as well get on with it. “Some people were, uh, talking, at work today, about Catwoman—”

“Dreadful business,” Jemma tutted. “Poor Selena’s all in a knot because of it.”

“Yeah, it’s – bad, for sure,” he agreed lamely. “Anyway, the idea came up that – that superheroes are, erm, y’know, _how_ , inherently by being superheroes, and – Don’t laugh, I’m trying to say something here!” he snapped at her, and Jemma covered her mouth apologetically, though her eyes continued to crinkle with mirth. “It just got me thinking, and then I started getting nervous that I’d never told you, or never made it clear – because I can imagine how it might look, with the timing of it all, but I – it’s very important to me that you know that I’m not here, with you, like this, because you’re Batman. That it’s – you’re _Jemma._ You’re not interesting and confusing and oddly hilarious and really damn gorgeous because you’re Batman. I found you interesting and confusing and oddly hilarious and really damn gorgeous before I knew you were a superhero. I feel the way I do about you because you’re _Jemma_ , and no secret identity could change that. I mean, okay, there’s probably a line – if you were a supervillain I might need to revise my assessment, but—”

At this point he realized Jemma’s eyes were filled with tears and he frantically tried to backpedal.

“No, I mean, I’m sure we’d find a way to work it out, you’d probably only be a supervillain in the eyes of society but really you’d be doing something magnificently selfless and heroic—”

Jemma cut him off with both her hands on the side of his face and a resounding kiss. Forehead to his, she breathed, “You brilliant, beautiful man,” and kissed him again, once, twice, thrice, quickly and sweetly. “I’d hoped – assumed, really – I’ve felt this way for far too long as well, and I thought you might as well, and given how you’ve always adamantly detested Batman I thought it fairly certain that your feelings originated in who I am outside of that work, but—” She kissed the corner of his mouth, catching the single traitorous tear that had escaped down Fitz’s cheek. “That’s just about the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said.”

“Yeah?” Fitz whispered, circling her with his arms.

“Yeah.” Jemma wasn’t crying anymore, just sitting there, her nose nuzzling against his cheek, her breath hot on his chin, eyelashes fluttering. Fitz was on the verge of closing his eyes as well, reveling in her closeness, when she spoke again, voice soft but determined. “Fitz?”

“Yes, Jemma?”

“Make love to me.”

She led him to the bedroom, tugging him along by one hand. The pathetically poetic thought flitted through his head that it was beautifully parallel to their first kiss, when it had been she instead of he in uniform, when – like now – she’d seemed able to read his deepest desires and had not only understood but reciprocated. She undressed him at the foot of the bed, stopping every article of clothing to kiss his jaw or his chest or his bicep, until he was down to his boxer briefs. She hovered there for a moment, considering his crotch, but Fitz brought her gently back up to standing, tangled his fingers in her hair and kissed her.

“We can’t get much done like this,” she murmured against his lips, working at her trousers as Fitz chased her tongue.

“Don’t care,” he mumbled, thoroughly entranced by the softness of the moist skin just inside her lips. “I’m busy.”

Eventually he reluctantly backed away enough to help her get her top off, and there she was, inches away, in undergarments far more concealing than what she’d worn the night of the gala, but still, somehow, infinitely more alluring.

“Stare later, fuck now,” Jemma teased, and then she pushed him back onto the bed and straddled him.

“I thought you wanted to _make love_ ,” Fitz said, imitating her accent. Then Jemma tossed her bra aside and pulled his underwear down so his cock sprung free and he found the whole thing far less amusing.

“We can do that later too, if you like,” Jemma whispered, raising herself up so his length dragged along the fabric of her panties. Fitz’s stomach clenched at the sensation, the moist heat so close. “But I’ve been craving you for far too long.”

Fitz caught the back of her neck with one desperately seeking hand and brought her down for a heated snog, their bodies sliding against each other as Jemma continued to create friction at their groins. With his other hand he found the back of her thigh – whether as support for himself or for her, he was unsure, but the flesh and tensing muscle felt far too good to let go.

He waited until she sat back to shimmy off her underpants and was poised above him, knees tight against his hips, lips parted in fervent concentration, about to guide his cock into her ready body, before he murmured, “Jemma?”

Her fingers slipped over his tip, and she glanced up at him with a bit of frustration. “Hmm??”

“We never did eat that Chinese food.”

In the ensuing laughter, she somehow managed to fall forward onto his chest _and_ still slide his cock inside her, and then they were laughing and kissing and thrusting and grinding until the rhythm and tension and need drove everything else away.

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i usually try to write more ~~detail~~ in my smut but didn't feel like it/didn't feel it was needed here? we all know where the parts go and whatnot right


	10. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is a fluffersmutter chapter :)

Jemma woke to an unusual flurry of air against her ear. She realized immediately that crisp autumn had finally arrived in Gotham and she hadn’t turned up the thermostat; the room was freezing. Shimmying deeper into the mattress, she started to tug the sheets higher up over her bare shoulders, but she found them inexplicably trapped.

The obstruction, she was pleased to discover, was Fitz’s arm, laid along top the sheets next to her. He was laying on his side, cheek all smooshed up against the pillow, smiling at her.

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” he murmured. “I was trying not to breathe but it got away from me.”

Jemma sighed contentedly, shifting over a bit so her legs bumped Fitz’s. “It’s okay. I wouldn’t want to miss a second of this anyway.”

She stretched up to kiss his jaw, but Fitz leaned down at the same moment for the same or similar purpose, and they bumped in the middle, his chin against her nose.

“Sorry,” Fitz laughed, finally finding her lips. She grinned against his mouth, letting him cradle her cheek, resting her hand carelessly on his hip. (She could touch him carelessly now, any part of him, kiss and caress and adore the way she wanted.)

Their languorous kiss was interrupted by Fitz’s phone buzzing on the far night stand. He groaned into her mouth but drew back, tracing his fingers tenderly down her cheek a few times before he rolled over to answer the call. His movement pulled the sheet almost entirely off of Jemma’s body, still naked from last night, and at first she squeaked and sought cover, but then, considering the muscles of Fitz’s back as he stretched out an arm, she settled back into her pillow, legs spread slightly.

“Good morning, Commissioner. No, that’s alright, it’s, uh, well, it is past ten, I should—”

He glanced over at Jemma apologetically and caught sight of the way she’d laid herself out for him. He moaned silently and tried desperately to fling the edge of the sheet at her; she batted it away.

“Yes sir, I’m here, sir, what did you—”

Holding his gaze, Jemma started tracing around one of her breasts with the tip of her finger. Fitz fell off the edge of the bed.

Scrambling up, he yanked the sheet around him and staggered a few feet away, pointedly turning his back to her. Jemma chuckled but didn’t stop her motions; just because he wasn’t looking didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy herself.

“Oh – _really_?” Fitz’s voice gained an octave and he nearly dropped the sheet. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Monday – yes sir. I’ll be there. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. Buh-bye.”

He turned slowly, looking at Jemma with horrified eyes. “Why did I choose _now_ to start saying _buh-bye?”_

“What was that about?” Jemma prodded, her hand now stroking across her stomach.

“You,” Fitz said pompously, tossing his phone onto the bed and puffing out his bare chest, “are looking at Gotham City PD’s newest sergeant.”

“ _What_?” Jemma shrieked, jumping up onto her knees with a childlike clap of delight. “Oh, _Fitz_ , I’m so proud of you, this is the _best_ news—”

“There’s a ceremony Monday, official promotion, press coverage, all that,” he continued importantly, and Jemma beamed, so glad to see him properly pleased with himself. “I _was_ going to invite you as my plus one, but you’re a vixen, you are, could’ve given me a heart attack while I was on the phone with the Commissioner!”

“I can’t help myself,” Jemma giggled, falling backwards onto her bum as Fitz kneeled on the edge of the bed and crawled towards her. “And if anything, I’d have given you an orgasm, not a heart attack. Think you could control your voice while you talk to him, if I were down on my knees, sucking you o—oomph!”

Fitz tackled her, snugging both arms around her waist and practically attacking her face with kisses. He seemed nearly drunk with his own success, and Jemma bathed in it, absorbed his affection and his closeness and his triumph and could’ve cried merely from the fact that it was she, of all people, who got to share it with him.

“What _am_ I going to do with you?” Fitz murmured into her shoulder.

“Weeelllll,” Jemma said, drawing out the word in time with her hands skimming over his chest, “I _was_ going to ask you to help me fulfill my every wish and sexual fantasy—” Fitz’s eyes bugged out and his hips lost some of their respectful distance from her. “But seeing as we’ve got something to celebrate and we’re celebrating _you_ , how about I help fulfill one of _yours_?”

Fitz frowned. “Not sure I’ve got any.”

“Really?” Jemma snorted. “Everyone’s got a _little_ something.”

“No, no, not really, I don’t think so,” he shrugged.

“Methinks the sergeant doth protest too much,” Jemma breathed, pushing up on her elbows to bite gently at his neck.

“Jemma, honestly, last night was perfect – more than perfect – I can’t imagine anything else—”

“And yesterday you would’ve told me that just snogging was perfect!” Jemma laughed. “I get it, Fitz, you’re easily satisfied—”

“Now, I wouldn’t say _that_ —”

“And I love that, I really do, I appreciate your sweetness and you’re very easy-going in the best way, and last night _was_ perfect. And I won’t push you. I want you to feel safe with me. And know that your ideas won’t make me uncomfortable. So.” She tilted her head, pouting exaggeratedly. “Are you sure there isn’t any way I can show how happy I am for my big, strong officer?”

Thoroughly versed in microexpressions, Jemma didn’t miss the rapid flick of Fitz’s eyes towards the floor-to-ceiling windows. She laughed with glee.

“Oh, _really_ , Fitzy?” She pushed him off and bounded across the room, uncaring about her nudity, riding their shared emotional high. “ _This_ is what you think about every time you come in here and see my windows? Not the view, all of Gotham spread below, the river steely against the horizon – no, _you_ think about fucking me against the glass for everyone to see.”

“Well, now,” Fitz wheedled, scooching to the edge of the bed, the nervous tucking of his toes against the floorboards at odds with his obvious erection. “I don’t think anyone would actually _see_ , we _are_ very high up—”

“The birds,” Jemma reminded him.

“Yes, the birds. I’m a bird exhibitionist,” he scoffed.

“Birds are very bizarre!” she objected. “Little fluffy perverts, they are…”

“But I _can’t_ deny,” Fitz said slowly, and Jemma did a little dance on the balls of her feet, the win already in her grasp, “that the idea is… appealing.”

“It _is_ ,” Jemma agreed fervently. “I’d honestly never thought of it before just now and frankly I’m impressed with your imagination, Fitz. We make an excellent team.”

He grinned crookedly at her, in that way that somehow subverted her arousal and went straight to her mushy emotional core.

“Well, c’mon now, it’s cold over here,” she urged, pressing her back against the glass and shivering. “Come warm me up.”

Shaking his head in disbelief, Fitz snagged a condom from the side table, slipping it on slowly as he approached her with an amused, irrepressible, salaciously hungry smirk on his face. Jemma wriggled in place again, suddenly not minding the cold biting at her bum, elated he was now as interested as she.

“Hello, officer,” she hummed, tilting her hips forward as his hands, hot as coals, found her waist.

“Turn around,” Fitz said.

“What?”

“Turn around,” he repeated, this time a bit more convincingly imperative. “You said it was my fantasy, right?”

Delightfully scandalized, Jemma flicked her eyes over his naked form one more time before turning to face the window. In a second Fitz was against her, pressing her to the window. Jemma gasped as her cheek and nipples squeaked against the glass. He’d been right, this – the force of him against her, the whole expanse of the city below them – was arousing her faster than she’d thought possible.

Fitz steadied himself with one hand on the glass next to her head. Jemma kissed the inside of his wrist, trying to tell him that she trusted him and he could proceed. She couldn’t see what he was doing down below, but that made it all the more titillating when his fingers brushed across her pussy, followed shortly by his cock, the tip rubbing through her hair and wetness until it bumped her clit.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered, gently moving her hair across her back so it would fall over one shoulder. “I have every intention of granting _all_ your wishes in short order.”

“This isn’t a barter system, Fitz, it’s not zero-su----uuuuuh!!” she grunted as he thrust into her, the crisp October sky blurring in her vision at the first, deep entry. “Oh, _God_.”

One hand on Jemma’s hip, Fitz dragged himself nearly out again, then bucked forward, stifling his own group with a messy kiss to the base of Jemma’s neck.

“You okay?” he panted.

“ _Brilliant_ ,” she promised. “Never better.”

She could feel him grin against her skin and she knew frivolity had no place in sexual encounters but with Fitz it _did_ and she was giddy with happiness _and_ flying towards sexual ecstasy all at once.  

He started pumping in earnest, holding her to him with a firm hand on her lower belly. His pinky slipped onto her pubic bone and she whimpered, her hips circling a bit, and smart man that he was, he didn’t miss a trick. He cupped her with a full hand, fingers splayed around his own cock so he could support her and rub at her clit all at once, with the added benefit of additional stimulation on his pumping cock. Jemma laughed brokenly in incredulity, her body aching for him even as he gave her so much.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” she gasped, her eyes flicking over all the buildings she knew from the skyline.

“Me neither.”

“But I’m _so_ glad it is.”

“Me too,” Fitz groaned as she circled her hips again. “So damn glad.”

She could feel him losing control, and she pressed herself into his stroking hand, wanting to join him in climax, but he abruptly pulled away and out. She squeaked in protest, but next second he’d turned her to face him and was slipping back inside her.

“Need to see you,” he explained desperately. “Need to kiss you.”

Nearly swooning with want and affection, Jemma flung her arms around his neck and kissed him, rutting against his hips. A few more thrusts, her shoulderblades banging against the windows, the friction of Fitz’s pelvis against her clit, and they groaned in near-unison as they came, Jemma’s back arching, Fitz’s face buried between her breasts.

A hazy, sweaty second later, Jemma’s vision started to return and she grasped Fitz’s face with both hands, starting to laugh. Shaking his head, he settled slowly onto the floor, still holding her in his lap.

“That was—” Jemma choked out between giggles.

“Ridiculous,” Fitz snorted. She could feel his legs shaking, his cock pulsing feebly within her.

“I was going to say ‘the best thing ever’, but yes, it was a bit ridiculous.” She kissed him quickly, then again more softly, and smiled as she felt his lips twitch with satisfaction. “Well done, you.”

“On the orgasm?” he chuckled.

“The promotion, you daft man.” She considered, carding her fingers aimlessly through his hair. “And the orgasm. You’re really having an excellent morning, aren’t you?”

His hands were stroking lazily at her lower back, just at the curve of her bum, the gesture impossibly tender and non-aggressive. She _could’ve_ gone a second round, if he’d shown the desire, but she was also feeling the prick of the cool air again and wanted more than a second orgasm to be back in bed with him, snuggling and cuddling the warmth into the tips of their fingertips and toes.

As if by unspoken agreement, she rose off him just as he started to shift, and she helped him up. He kissed the hand she’d offered him and then padded off to dispose of the condom and find her a moist towel.

They spent the rest of the morning in bed, eating the cold Chinese leftovers and watching Saturday morning cartoons.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *throws soft happy fluff and smut into the air like confetti for my sweet tortured fictional children*


	11. Chapter 10

“She’ll be here.”

“Maybe something came up,” Fitz fretted.

“She’ll _be_ here,” Piper assured him. “You gotta trust her.”

“Trust isn’t the issue.” Fitz swallowed and wiped his sweaty palms onto his trousers. “I don’t think I can do this without her.”

Piper rolled her eyes but smiled. “Hold still.”

Fitz scanned the crowd filling the precinct headquarters again as Piper adjusted the tie of his dress uniform. The promotion ceremony was set to begin in five minutes and there was still no sign of Jemma. At this point the only thing keeping him from panicking about standing in front of a crowd of strangers – some of whom had _cameras_ and _microphones_ – was his anxiety about why Jemma wasn’t among them.

“Why do I have to do this again, sir?” he asked Coulson desperately. “Couldn’t you just pin the badge on me in the privacy of your office?”

“It’s good PR,” the commissioner reminded him, for something like the tenth time that day. “And you want to be able to send a newspaper clipping to your mom.”

“We could easily fake a newspaper clipping.” Ignoring his colleagues’ derisive looks he insisted, “I know people! Just throw some text together in Word, print it, distress the page a bit—Mum won’t know the difference.”

“Little Leo is afraid,” Joey teased, then dodged Fitz’s retaliatory swipe with his police hat. “Afraid of all the _people_.”

“Just imagine them in their underpants,” came a chipper voice from just off-stage.

“ _Jemma_ ,” Fitz breathed in relief, rushing to the edge of the platform and scrambling down to hug her. “I thought—”

“Board meeting ran long,” she said, pecking his lips. A camera flashed from the media section and they both winced; they weren’t exactly keeping their relationship a secret, but nor were they eager to end up on the front page of the _Gotham Times_. May, who’d accompanied Jemma and was standing a short distance away, scowled and stepped between them and the reporters.

“Does it make me less manly if I pass out?” Fitz sighed, grimacing as he looked at the stage again, with its podium for Coulson and a single chair for Fitz himself. “I always thought there were supposed to be a few people getting promoted all at once. That’d take the pressure off a bit. Instead it’s just… me. In a spotlight.”

“It’ll be over before you know it,” Jemma murmured, squeezing his hands. “And you and I can get viciously drunk at lunch afterwards.”

“Fitz,” Coulson called, gesturing to the stage. “We gotta start.”

“Right.” He glanced back at Jemma. “I don’t know if I want to imagine all the middle-aged male reporters in their underpants, but I’ll _definitely_ try it on you.”

Jemma laughed, already withdrawing towards the public seating. “So instead of passing out you’ll be pitching a tent on stage? That might be manly but I’m not sure it’s better.”

Her presence had done just what Fitz had known it would – made him smile and forget for a moment that everyone was about to be staring at _him_.

She had it easy, really, he thought as he climbed back onto the stage and sat behind Coulson. As Batman no one ever looked at her, not truly _looked_. (Sure, she ran a whole damn company during the day and frequently appeared in various forms of news media for that, _but_.)

He didn’t really hear the beginning of Coulson’s speech, he was so focused on steeling himself against the camera flashes and the heat of the room and the creeping certainty that he had something in his teeth or his zipper was undone or he’d stand up to shake Coulson’s hand and trip and fall into the crowd, crushing a few people. Couldn’t he just go fling himself into the line of fire instead? That seemed less terrifying at the moment.

Just then, Coulson turned to gesture to him, and if he hadn’t, he would’ve been struck directly in the heart by the bullet.

As it was, he turned, and the bullet zipped just past Coulson’s chest and tore through the American flag at Fitz’s right shoulder.

Pandemonium rained. The crowd screamed, people falling out of their chairs, crawling for cover, running for the windows and doors. Officers attending the ceremony and at work in the offices nearby rushed in mid-crouch towards the source of the bullet, guns poised.

More shots rang out, some crashing in through the windows, and Fitz flung himself out of the chair, dragging Coulson down behind the podium.

“Sir!” he shouted over the screams and the gunfire. “ _What_ the _hell_ is happening?”

“Do I look like I know?” Coulson panted, struggling to get his gun out. “Where’s your weapon?”

“In my desk. Didn’t go with the dress uniform.”

Coulson peeked around the edge of the podium. “Think you can make it? The gunmen seem to be on the fifth floor balcony and across the street. I’ll take the external team if you can do internal.”

“Yes, sir,” Fitz said, and he rolled off the stage, using its edge for a shield from the bullets before darting across the room to huddle behind a line of filing cabinets. His pulse was thrumming and he had to take a steadying breath, but unlike before the aborted ceremony, his fear was different this time. It was directed outward, for his colleagues, for the event attendees, for – “Jemma,” he whispered.

Forgetting to duck and cover, he bolted out into the fleeing people. He had a moment of panic, seeing a woman’s body on the floor, but someone had tripped in the hurry and Jemma was helping her up. She’d clearly been leading everyone to safety, of _course_ she had. He ran to her side and grabbed her elbow.

“You have to go,” he shouted into her ear, even as he turned to the stream of people and called, “Follow Ms. May here to the exit, keep low—”

“I’m not leaving you,” Jemma said fiercely.

“Jemma,” Fitz growled, tugging her down into a crouch as another round of gunfire made the crowd duck and scream, “I know you want to help, I know you _can_ help, but you have to go, for your cover. It’d be a little hard to explain why a CEO billionaire stayed when the rest of the public evacuated.”

“I could go after them,” she persisted. “They could be Hydra, Fitz, this is our chance—”

“We don’t know what they want or who they’re after,” he cut in. “We’re trained for this, Jemma. You have to let us do our jobs.”

She looked about to cry, she was so frustrated, but she nodded and kissed him forcefully. “Be safe.” She made to stand up and follow May in helping the few stragglers escape. “I’ll see you later.”

“I love you.” Fitz froze. “Oh, shit, Jemma, I – I didn’t mean to say that in a crisis—”

“I love you too,” she smiled.

 

 

An hour later, Fitz, Coulson, Piper, Joey, and the rest of their squad met up in the precinct.

“They were gone by the time we got there,” Coulson sighed, dropping into Piper’s desk chair. “Vacant apartment across the street. Nobody saw anything. Forensics is swabbing the place now.”

“Same thing with the snipers inside the building,” Fitz reported. “We saw two people up on the balcony, shooting down across the atrium into the precinct, but they slipped into the staircase and disappeared into the crowd. Two guns were found on the fifth floor. They’re checking for DNA, but –”

“Yeah, they won’t find anything.” Coulson shook his head. “Hell of a day. I remember when we used to just have a few bank robberies every week. It was a magical time.”

“Sir,” Piper said, “why did they just – give up? Were they just trying to cause a little chaos?”

“Or they hit their target,” Joey said grimly.

“I don’t think they did,” Coulson frowned. “There were a few injuries but mostly from falling down, knocking into things in the panic. I don’t think they actually hit anyone.”

“So, just really bad criminals,” chuckled Officer Marquez.

“I don’t like it,” Piper said quietly. “First Davis, now this? They were shooting from _inside_ our own building.”

“And Fitz didn’t even get his promotion!”

“Which reminds me.” Coulson stood and clapped Fitz on the shoulder. “With me, Sergeant Fitz. Let’s make this official.”

“Oh, I don’t need to – I’m happy to just—” Fitz was itching to clock out, to go check that Jemma and May were okay.

“With me,” Coulson repeated, in a tone that conveyed it was an order.

They left the other officers huddled together, discussing the day’s events in tones of disgust, dismay, confusion, and disbelief.

“Doubt I’ll make the newspaper after all this,” Fitz joked weakly.

Coulson closed the door behind them and faced Fitz, a small, self-satisfied smile hovering on his lips. “So. Jemma’s Batman, huh?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying to finish this thing!! One more chapter. Thanks for hanging with me. XOXO


	12. Chapter 11

It was only afternoon yet Jemma felt drained to the bone, like she'd been transported to the Arctic, with the light misrepresenting the actual hour. She craved nothing more than to crawl deep within the covers on her bed, but she and May and Bobbi were holding an impromptu war council of sorts in Jemma's living room.  

"Fitz told me to leave it to the police--" 

"Maybe you should," Bobbi said quietly, firmly. She was always reticent to disagree with Jemma but maintained a clarity and honesty that was part of why Jemma valued her so highly. "If you meddle in this, now that they're so deeply invested, chances are you'd just get hit in the crossfire." 

"And the police aren't exactly on my side, either," Jemma muttered, rubbing her forehead ruefully. "Excepting Fitz." 

"We have a bigger problem," May announced, joining the conversation seamlessly as she returned from checking various communication channels. "Jemma, Coulson knows." 

"Knows--?" 

May pursed her lips at being asked to expand on the statement. "Knows about _you_. Knows that you're Batman." 

Jemma shook her head. "How could he? And how would _you_ know that _he_ knows?" 

"You have to trust me on this," May insisted. "I've known Coulson for a long time, or I knew him, anyway, and he knows _me_ , and the sort of work I specialize in, and when he saw me with you at the station, I just--" Her jaw clenched. "I saw his face. He put two and two together and made the leap and he knows, I could just tell."  

"It's not your fault, May," Bobbi reassured her, correctly guessing that May was blaming herself for the breach. "But if that's true, we might not be safe here -- Coulson could be sending a squad here any minute to arrest Jemma--" 

"I don't think so." May seemed uncomfortable under their questioning gazes. "Unless he's changed, and I mean really _changed_ , since I knew him, Coulson will sit on this for a few days, think it over, then probably reach out to me to get confirmation. He's a careful man, and not unreachable." 

"It's still a risk," Bobbi said, glancing at Jemma, who'd been frowning at the table between them.  

"It is," May agreed, "and I'm prepared to set one of our contingency plans in motion--" 

The elevator doors slid open on the far side of the room, expelling Fitz, who looked as bedraggled and hazy as Jemma herself was feeling. She gasped, struck simultaneously by a sadness at seeing him in such a state and by a deeper, sweeter ache at simply _seeing_ him, there and okay.  

She pushed herself away from the table and flung herself at him, nearly toppling them both as she hugged him. "Oh, _Fitz_ ," she exhaled against his neck. "I wasn't sure-- I didn't--" 

"I texted you that I was okay," he protested, but she could hear his smile, his pleasure at the affirmation of her concern and affection.  

"I know, I just--" She withdrew and smoothed his shirt with both hands, focusing on his clavicle to steady herself before looking up at him. "If you'd been kidnapped or something, of course they'd send a message like that--" 

"You're ridiculous," he murmured, but he pressed a kiss to her temple before letting her guide him over to the others.  

"Glad you're okay, Fitz," Bobbi smiled; May just nodded at him.  

"Thanks, guys," he sighed, ruffling his hair as if to wake himself up. "Wish I were coming with better news, but, ah--" He looked down at Jemma, obviously miserable about what he had to impart. "Coulson knows." 

Jemma and Bobbi both laughed. 

Fitz looked between them, eyebrows raised indignantly. "I'm serious! I know I'm not a superhero or a superspy but my intel is credible--" 

"We know, babe," Jemma chortled, squeezing his hand. "We just already knew about Coulson." 

"Oh." Now that he'd gotten his duty out of the way, he looked vaguely disappointed that his news wasn't, in fact, new at all. "How?" 

"May," Bobbi said simply.  

"Ah," Fitz nodded in recognition.  

"How did _you_ know?" May asked Fitz.  

"He told me?" Fitz admitted. "Pulled me into his office after our failed manhunt and all and just out of the blue says, 'So, Jemma's Batman, huh?'" 

"You sound just like him," May snorted, at Fitz's parodied accent. 

Ignoring her, Fitz had eyes only for Jemma. "What are we going to do?" 

"I thought you wanted me to stay out of this," Jemma reminded him, a touch playfully.  

"That was before your entire identity, way of life, and freedom were imperiled."  

"Well, when you put it _that_ way..." 

Jemma knew she should feel alarmed, if not downright terrified, by the prospect of the Gotham police commissioner knowing her identity. But somehow, standing there with Fitz's steady hand on her lower back and Bobbi and May on either side of the table, she saw the situation only as a new challenge for them to confront together. 

"I have an idea," she said after a moment. "None of you will like it, and I'm open to discussion, but my mind is already rather made up and I hope you'll support me on this..."

 

~~~~~

 

After May and Bobbi had gone home and Fitz and Jemma had enjoyed long, hot showers, they sat together on her couch, dressed in matching fluffy green bathrobes and drinking wine.  

Jemma played with the knuckles and lines on one of Fitz's hands, hesitant to intrude on the soft, intimate silence enclosing them. But a conversion was necessitated.  

"Everything could change tomorrow," she murmured.  

Fitz looked at her steadily. "Everything changed a long time ago, Jem. Things have a habit of continually changing." 

"When did you become a philosopher?" she chuckled. His ring finger rose under her touch and she shivered, the unexpected contact shimmying a bit of interest in amidst her exhaustion. "I only mean -- I don't know if we'll be able to be this way together, after tomorrow. No matter how it turns out--" 

"The only condition in which we will not be together is when you decide to throw me over," Fitz cut her off, a raw edge to his otherwise firm voice. "Whether you have to go on the run or the thing works out -- I'll be with you. You have me." 

"I have you," Jemma whispered.  

"I can't say I like the idea of you getting more involved with this than you already are," Fitz continued, smoothing her hair over her ear in a gliding, unnecessary, soothing motion, "but I can't really say it's just police business now. You're in it. So we'll deal with it." 

She studied his face. The half moons under his eyes were almost as blue as his irises, and still he was the most beautiful sight.  

"I'd rather be in danger with you than safe without you," she said, getting the words out quickly because she knew how foolish they sounded. 

Fitz snorted. "That's stupid." Then, with his nose in his wineglass, he added, "Me too."

 

 

~~~~~

  

Jemma went as incognito as she could; likely it was an unnecessary and ultimately unhelpful precaution, but she wanted to control the situation as much as possible. So when they entered the precinct office, May in front like a body guard and Fitz gripping her hand like he was squeezing lemons, she kept her baseball cap and thick sunglasses on, the collar of the jacket she'd borrowed from Fitz up. Nonetheless, all the officers glanced at them and then away, a bit too quickly, as if registering how conspicuously inconspicuous she looked.  

May didn't even wait for an answer when she knocked on Commissioner Coulson's door, opening it immediately and striding through like the Mayor herself. Coulson's feet dropped from the desk and he straightened his tie, even as he smiled disarmingly.  

"Melinda!" he exclaimed, his whole face crinkling sunnily.  

"Phil," May said curtly, lips tight, as she stepped aside. Jemma could see the color rising in her cheeks. Maybe there was more to this past acquaintance than May had let on... 

_Melinda??_ Fitz mouthed at Jemma.  She giggled.  

"Fitz?" Coulson had caught sight of them as they turned from shutting the door; he rounded his desk to lean against it.  "And -- well. Miss Simmons. I don't believe I've had the pleasure." 

"It's Doctor, actually," Jemma corrected as she shook his hand, removing her hat and Aviators.  

"I'm guessing you haven't come here to make my job easier and turn yourself in, huh?" Coulson asked ruefully. Jemma couldn't help liking him -- he was genuine and just the right level of corny.  

"She most certainly has not, and if you even *think* about trying to take her so help me--" Fitz growled, trying to place himself in front of Jemma, but she pushed him aside. 

"Thank you, Fitz, but that's really not the tone I'd like to set for this meeting." She kept a reassuring hand on the inside of his wrist -- reassuring him or herself, she wasn't certain -- as she returned to speaking with Coulson. "I haven't come to turn myself in. I'm not convinced there's any reason to do so. In fact, I think this city needs me more than ever. I think *you* need me more than ever. Your officers are under siege." 

"And you can help?"  

"Absolutely." 

Coulson nodded, obviously impressed with her bravado. "What do you suggest? I'm sure Sergeant Fitz has told you about the task force -- " 

"That task force is an effort to divide us, when we most need to unite. Perhaps the motives of some of the members are pure, but I believe someone is directing this hunt for me to distract from the real issues." 

"I appreciate a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone, Dr. Simmons," Coulson smiled, "but forgive me if I'm not willing to put my neck on the line for your hunch." 

"I'm not asking you to. I propose we work together -- with a man on the inside of the task force--" She nodded at Fitz, "and my information and efforts supporting your information and efforts, and vice-versa. We would be stronger together. No one need know." 

She took it as a good sign that Coulson was silent a moment, considering.  

"Why would you trust me with this?" he finally asked, hands folded before him. "You know bringing you in would be a boon for me and the whole department." 

"I trust you for the same reason you should trust me -- you come highly recommended by people I trust and care about." 

Coulson's gaze swiveled between Fitz and May; looking at her, a small, significant smile appeared again. Jemma would _definitely_ be asking many subtly prying questions on the ride home.  

"Okay," Coulson said at last, simply. 

"Okay?" Fitz repeated breathlessly.  

"I've always gone by my gut and my gut says you're not the real threat to Gotham. And you're right -- Fitz and May are pretty much all the proof I need."  

He stood and extended his hand again. "I look forward to working with you, Dr. Batman." 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thats it! Thanks for supporting it and me!


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